Volume 4 Notes

I'm just going to put these here since I doubt anyone is going to look at this.

Anyway, so volume IV takes place about nine months after Volume III and it's a dark time for our Scarlet Knight, Emma Earl.  She's had to sell her motorcycle (among other things) to pay bills because she for whatever reason can't find a science job in the city, because she's still a pariah for the Heartbreaker murders.  Anyway, one day after interviewing for a job way beneath her (like McDonald's or something) she comes home to find she's been evicted.  Becky and her are still estranged so she can't move in there and the Sanctuary is still demolished.  So it's either with the witches or with the Sewer Rat.  Gee, guess which one she picks?

The problem is that Ms. Chiostro has become sort of a swinger and wants Emma to help her in feeling young again.  Except you really can't pick a worse person to go with you to bars and such as a wingman.  This probably leads to some hurt feelings because despite the magic armor she's vincible.

Anyway, things get even worse when she goes out as the Scarlet Knight and runs across another vigilante.  This one is more in the Rorschach mode of no mercy.  He calls himself the Wraith or some damned thing like that.  There's a scuffle between him and the Scarlet Knight, which leaves someone (or someones) dead.

When Dan gets wind of this he uses some of his money and influence to complain to the city council president, who happens to be Becky's boss, Councilwoman Napier.  She in turn puts heat on Captain Donovan to find the Scarlet Knight even as people around the city (including the ungrateful Korean market owner from the first story) are bitching about the vigilante, whom many still think was behind the Heartbreaker murders.

Emma is feeling bummed about the people who died and generally feeling worthless in general with everything else that's going on.  Then she gets a call from someone representing a Russian billionaire.  He wants her to come to Russia to examine some of his oil/natural gas fields, being that she's a geologist and all.  This seems weird, but he offers a big paycheck for a couple of weeks of work.  She doesn't want to neglect the duty, but even Marlin starts telling her that it might be good to take a break and let the heat die down.

So Emma goes to Russia and meets the creepy billionaire.  It's soon obvious he has a thing for her, but she manages to keep him at bay.  Anyway, she goes about looking at his oil and gas fields and then later he gets to what he really wants from her, which is to examine some weird meteor his people found.  His son originally found the meteor and then promptly went nuts and on the lam.  Unbeknownst to her, the meteor has some kind of parasite or bacteria or whatever that does weird things to people's brains.  It like overstimulates certain areas to make people hyper-obsessive.

In Emma's case it stimulates her scientific curiosity so that she literally spends days without eating or sleeping to study the meteor.  For the creepy billionaire it probably stimulates his romantic centers, so that he makes a move on her and when she turns him down he tries to imprison her.  She gets away and returns to Rampart City, carrying the meteor with her.

She takes the rock somewhere to study, still obsessed with it.  Marlin manages to guilt her into finally going out to do the duty.  But when she goes to put on the armor, something freaky happens.  She winds up in Becky's body!  (The reason for this is the magic of the armor can't allow her infected self to use it, so it trades bodies until a cure can be found.  Does that make sense?  Not really.)  And naturally Becky finds herself in Emma's body.  (Who got the better end of that?)

They pay a visit to the witches, who in turn start to investigate what they can do about the problem, which requires a visit to the witch archives, wherever that is, and talking to the archivist.  They don't find anything right away but keep looking.

So now Emma gets to remember what it's like to be a regular person again.  The only hangup is that the parasite/bacteria that was driving her as herself to study the rock is now driving her (as Becky) to eat like a freaking whale.  This is what starts to clue her in that something is up.

Meanwhile, Becky (as Emma) now has to go out and be the Scarlet Knight.  There's probably some hilarity as she has to learn the ropes of this new body and all the gnarly powers of the armor.  Basically it kind of repeats what happened in the first story.  Along the way she meets this Wraith dude, who is in the process of slaughtering a bunch of Don Vendetta's goons.

To complicate things further, the creepy Russian billionaire has sent some his goons to the city to hunt Emma down and recover the rock.  Since Emma (as Becky) needs to study the rock, she asks Dan to help get her some equipment from the Plaine Museum.  This in turn prompts them to go out on a date or two (where Emma (as Becky) eats like a whale) and maybe even kiss.

Their relationship builds even more when the Russian goons try to kidnap her.  She barely manages to escape and takes refuge with Dan and they screw!  (Does that mean Emma is still a virgin?  Hurm.)  Eventually she and the witches find a cure to the parasite or bacteria, which she uses to cure herself.

Meanwhile, poor Becky (as Emma) is being worn to a frazzle from fighting the mob, Russian goons, various other petty criminals, and this Wraith guy all while ducking Captain Donovan and the cops.  It's during a battle with this Wraith dude that she's nearly killed.  Lucky for her, Emma finds the cure and so they magically switch bodies again.  The real Emma is able to take down the Wraith, only to discover that it's the Russian guy's son or something.  He was one of the first to touch the meteor and so is infected with the disease or whatever it is.  She gives him the antidote, which makes him less of a psychotic nut.

The son in turn goes to his daddy and they stop hunting for Emma and the rock.  The son goes home with the Russian goons, so that solves one problem.  Other things start looking up for Emma in that she gets a job with her old high school in Parkdale to teach chemistry.  It's not a great job, but she kind of enjoys it.  And she and Becky make progress now that Becky has seen how difficult it is to be the Scarlet Knight and so allows Emma to move in with her.  The downside is that Dan and Becky (as Becky) are now a couple--united in part because both have lost a spouse recently.  Much like with Isis, Emma can't help feeling a little jealous.  Still, there's a job to be done so Emma goes to do it.

Or something like that.

Chapter 1

The Scarlet Knight, Vol II: Time Enough to Say Goodbye Part I   Chapter 1             She had seen people die before.  She had seen them lying in their caskets, faces waxy and pale, arms folded stiffly across their chests.  Sometimes she had been the one to put them in the casket, a concept that always haunted her.  Despite this, Emma Earl couldn't help crying at the sight of her aunt lying in the casket.             It had been a long time in coming.  For years Aunt Gladys had battled Alzheimer's, her sanity slipping away a piece at a time until she couldn't recognize her niece or anyone—save for her nurse.  A long time for Emma to prepare for the worst, and yet she wasn't prepared when it happened.             The word came in the middle of the night.  To Emma's continuing shame, she had not been around to answer the telephone.  She had been down by the docks, intercepting a shipment of drugs set to be released onto the streets by Don Vendetta.  Becky had answered the phone and sat up the rest of the night, waiting for Emma to return.             Emma knew something was wrong when she saw Becky devouring a pizza in the kitchen.  In the past eighteen months, Becky had dropped eighty pounds, swearing off high-fat foods.  This relapse could only mean something terrible had happened.  "How was your date?" Emma asked, thinking the date must have gone badly to put Becky in such a mood.             "The date?  Oh, fine."  Becky rose from the table, rushing over to Emma.  Her eyes were red from crying.  "I'm sorry, kid.  The nursing home called.  They say your aunt passed away.  In her sleep.  It was peaceful, they said."             Emma stared at her friend, no words coming to her.  Just yesterday she had visited Aunt Gladys at the nursing home and she had been no worse than usual.  She had mistaken Emma for her old friend Elena, thinking they were both two years old.  This was not unusual for Aunt Gladys, not at this stage.             Then in an instant she was gone.  Dead and now laying in a casket the same brass color her hair had been before the disease robbed her of her youth.  Emma had chosen the casket, one of the many items she had attended to over the last two days.  So many things to do that until this moment she hadn't the time to grieve properly, to really feel the loss.             She sat in the front row of the funeral home along with Becky and Aunt Gladys's nurse Marie Marsh, whose eyes were dry while an inexhaustible supply came from Emma's.  Her aunt had no family besides Emma.  She had tracked down some of the friends Aunt Gladys had mistaken her for over the last seven years, including Elena, who was now a silver-haired woman with a two-year-old granddaughter.  Some other residents of the nursing home—those who were in good enough health—had made the trip over, including Percival Graves.  He was Emma's unofficial mentor, the Scarlet Knight before she had taken up the mantle.             He hobbled over to Emma, clapping a strong hand on her shoulder.  "I know it's difficult," he said.  "Just try to remember the good times you shared.  But don't focus too much on the should'ves and would'ves."             "Thanks," she said.  "I'll try not to."             "Good girl."  He patted her shoulder before limping over to a seat.             As much as she wanted to heed his advice, she couldn't today.  Today was the day to focus on the past.  While the minister started into his sermon about the paradise that awaited the true believers, Emma went over her hastily prepared eulogy again.  It wasn't much of a speech, just some heartfelt words she had composed last night.             "And now Gladys's closest family, her niece, would like to say a few words," the minister said, stepping away from the podium.             Emma didn't move, her mind still thinking of what she had written.  She felt a panic rising within her, a panic she hadn't felt since taking her PSAT when she was ten.  Becky reached over to squeeze her hand.  "You're up, kid," Becky whispered.             "OK," Emma said.  She forced herself to stand up, to trudge up to the podium.  She cleared her throat to buy time and then dug into a pocket of her jacket for the speech.  The ink was splotchy in parts from her tears.  After clearing her throat again, she began:             "Aunt Gladys saved my life.  If not for her I wouldn't be standing here today or if I were, I wouldn't be the same person I am.  She came into my life when I needed her most, after my parents died.  I was lost in those days and she found me.             "She found me and helped give me the strength to go on, to find a reason to live.  She made me believe I could do anything I wanted if I put my mind to it.  She gave me hope when I had none.  She gave me love when I needed it most.  And she gave me support when I was at my weakest.  I can never thank her enough for that.  Never."             Emma looked down at her sheet of paper, but her eyes were too blurry to read the ink.  There was nothing left for her to say at any rate.  Aunt Gladys had gotten her through the darkest point in her life; she had saved Emma's life.             Like a blind woman she made her way back to her seat, collapsing onto the chair.  Becky patted her on the back, whispering soothing words as if Emma were a small child.  Emma didn't listen to these, her mind going back in time to that first day she met Aunt Gladys. #             At the time Aunt Gladys lived in a tiny apartment in the Trenches.  It was the sort of place frequented by recent immigrants or college students.  Aunt Gladys was neither, nor was she so poor that she had to live in such a decrepit place.  She was an idealist in those days, the kind of idealist who thought she could change a neighborhood through her example.             While others in the neighborhood double- and triple-bolted their doors, Aunt Gladys left hers unlocked.  Whenever Emma's mother had mentioned the foolishness of this, Aunt Gladys cheerfully said she had nothing worth stealing anyway.  Emma saw this was true when Aunt Gladys answered the door.  There was no television, VCR, or stereo system.  Aunt Gladys didn't own a computer or even know how to turn one on.  She relied only on a battered radio for entertainment and news when she was in the apartment, which Emma soon learned was infrequently.             Aunt Gladys liked to consider herself a woman of the people.  Less than an hour after the social worker turned Emma over to her, Aunt Gladys dragged Emma downstairs to street level.  She didn't have a car, relying on the bus for anywhere she couldn't get to on foot.  "It's a beautiful day," she said, looking up at the overcast sky.  "A perfect day for walking, don't you think?"             "I guess," Emma said, though she only felt like collapsing on the ground and bawling until she couldn't cry anymore.  Her parents had been brutally murdered less than twelve hours earlier; how could anything look beautiful?             As they walked along the street, past homeless men, drunks, and junkies, Emma pressed against her aunt's leg.  For her part, Aunt Gladys took no notice of these people.  "I know it doesn't look beautiful with all these clouds," Aunt Gladys said, "but just because we can't see the sun doesn't mean it isn't there.  It's always there, waiting to come out again."             Though she was only eight years old, Emma was smart enough to pick up on the metaphor.  The clouds represented her parents dying.  Eventually these clouds would blow away and the sun—the goodness in life—would return.  Though she understood this, she didn't believe it, at least not at the moment.  She didn't think the sun would ever shine in her life again.             They walked through the rundown neighborhood, all the way to Robinson Park.  There Aunt Gladys sat on a bench facing the manmade pond in the center of the park.  She patted the seat next to her, on which Emma dutifully sat.  A gaggle of Canada geese swam along the surface of the pond, two adults followed by a half-dozen goslings.  At that moment, Emma wondered what the goslings would do if their parents were suddenly killed and they were forced to fend for themselves.             "It's terrible what happened to your parents," Aunt Gladys said as she stared at the pond.  "I loved your mother more than anyone else in the whole world—except for you, of course."             Emma said nothing to this, watching the geese swim.  She wanted to wring their long, black necks.  She wanted to destroy them, to make them feel some of her pain.  How dare they swim around so normal and happy!             Aunt Gladys put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze.  "Your mother and I came here a lot when we were about your age.  Did I ever tell you about the time I fell in and she pulled me out?"             Emma shook her head.  "It was a day like this, only in the fall.  There were lots of geese heading for warmer places.  Hundreds of them on the surface of the pond.  I'd never seen so many in all my life.             "Your mother and I brought an old loaf of bread for feeding the geese.  It was all going fine until we got into a contest to see who could throw crumbs the farthest.  Your mother was never into sports, always too busy with her violin, so I thought it'd be easy.  I pitched on our school softball team.  She tossed her pieces a couple feet and I easily beat her.              "Your mother wouldn't give up, though.  She kept trying, tossing her little pieces of bread into the water.  I think she forgot all about the geese.  So did I.  I was determined not just to beat her, but really stick it to her.  Show her she wasn't so special.  That was my big mistake.             "You see, I got to showing off.  I stood right on the edge of the bank there and I really started winding up."  At this point Aunt Gladys stood up from the bench, whirling her right arm like a windmill.  "I wanted to get some speed on that bread so it would fly all the way across the pond to the other side.  But I was stupid.  I got moving my arm so fast I put myself off-balance.             "Before I could even throw the stupid bread crumbs into the pond, I fell right into the pond.  As you'd probably guess, it wasn't very deep.  Probably not much more than a foot.  That didn't matter.  I panicked.  I thrashed my arms around like a crazy person, scaring all the geese and ducks on the pond.  They probably never came back again.  I thought for sure I was going to drown in that pond.  I could see my life flashing before my eyes like they say happens when you're about to go.             "Then I heard your mother's voice.  At first I thought it was just part of the whole montage of my life.  But then I realized she was screaming, 'Stand up!  Stand up, you dummy!'  And I did.  I stood up."             She looked at Emma as if this story had some deep meaning.  "And?" Emma said.             "That's it.  She saved my life.  From that moment on, we never fought again, not even about boys."             "Why would you fight about that?" asked Emma, who at that point still thought of boys as icky cootie carriers.             "You'll understand some day, honey.  Anyway, we made a pact—pinky swore and everything—that if she ever needed something really, really bad, she could call on me and I'd come running to repay my debt."             "What did she ask for?"             "Well, that's another story, one that took place a lot later, when your mother and I were old ladies.  It was about eight years ago.  Your mom came to visit me at my place.  She was big as a house then, so big she could hardly even walk.  I'm not sure how she made it all the way there from where she and your dad lived.  Somehow she did and I took her to the bedroom so she could lie down.             "Before I could ask her if she wanted a cup of tea, she says, 'You remember your promise?  The one we made at the pond?'  I said I did.  She said she was finally calling in that favor.  I asked her what was so important that she would bring that up.  She patted her belly and said, 'I'm going to have a little girl.  Her name's Emma.  And if anything happens to me and her dad, I want you to take care of her.  Raise her as your own.'             "I was shocked.  Not about the baby, as I knew all about that.  I just didn't think she'd ever ask me to be the godmother, living the way I do.  I asked if she was serious about this, because I wasn't really the mothering type.  'I didn't think that either,' she told me. 'But I'm going to try.  For her.'"             At this point Aunt Gladys wiped tears from her eyes.  Emma stared down at her feet, not quite sure what to make of all this.  Clearing her throat, Aunt Gladys continued.  "I promised her I would do as she asked.  I promised that if anything happened to her and your dad, I would look after you.  And I'm going to.  I'm going to take care of you from now on.  I know I can't replace her and your dad, but I'm going to do the best I can to make sure you grow up right."             She put an arm around Emma's shoulder, pulling her into a hug.  All the tears that had been building up finally came out in a rush.  As Aunt Gladys pressed against her, though, Emma realized her aunt was crying just as much.             They had stayed on that bench for a long time, crying and holding onto each other.  The joggers and walkers and couples in love must have thought they were crazy.  Emma didn't care.  At that moment the world consisted only of her and Aunt Gladys. #             There would be no grave for Aunt Gladys.  In the early stages of her illness, she had put together her will with the help of a lawyer, declaring that she wanted her body cremated and the ashes spread in that pond where she had once fallen in and been saved by her sister—"Finish the job," she had said.             The funeral broke up not long after Emma's eulogy, with the minister saying the benediction to dismiss the mourners.  After everyone else filed away, Emma remained, going to see her aunt one final time.  "I'm sorry," she whispered to her aunt.  "I'm sorry I wasn't there."             She closed the lid of the coffin, never to see her aunt's face again.              She couldn't ride home on her motorcycle, not in the dress she'd worn for the funeral.  The motorcycle seemed horribly inappropriate in any case.  Becky had borrowed her new boyfriend's car, a rusty Dodge Stratus, its gold metallic paint reminding Emma of the casket.             "It's not your fault," Becky said after Emma buckled in.             "I know."             "You say you know, but I don't think you know."             "It was the disease.  There was nothing I could do.  Nothing the Scarlet Knight could do."  Not since the death of her parents had Emma felt so helpless.  For all the power of the magic armor, none of it could slow the progression of Alzheimer's.  She had asked the armor's spectral guardian Marlin about that one time.  In his usual cantankerous way, he said, "The armor is for battling evil.  There's nothing evil about a disease.  It's just a bunch of cells."             She had gone to Mrs. Chiostro, a practicing witch, who said nearly the same thing as Marlin.  "Sometimes you have let things be.  Magic, like the kind that made the armor, has to be used sparingly.  Otherwise you'd throw the whole world off balance."             In the latter stages of the illness, Emma was tempted to break into Mrs. Chiostro's shop to search for a potion that might restore Aunt Gladys to health.  She didn't, knowing the old witch was right.  She couldn't solve every little problem with magic.  That didn't make it any easier at this point.             Back at the apartment she shared with Becky, Emma kicked off her shoes and then collapsed on the bed.  She suddenly felt exhausted, not just in body, but in her spirit.  She needed a rest, a long, long rest.              "Is there anything you need?" Becky asked from the doorway.             "Not right now," Emma said.  "Thanks."             She lay in bed with her eyes closed, but she couldn't sleep.  She kept thinking about her aunt's illness, wondering if she could have done something.  If she had caught the signs of the disease early enough, maybe the doctors could have helped Aunt Gladys, or at least kept her from going downhill so quickly.  She wasn't a doctor in medicine, but she had memorized Gray's Anatomy when she was ten years old.  There had to have been something she missed, some sign she overlooked.             At some point she did finally fall asleep, only to wake up what felt like minutes later.  She sat up in bed, rubbing her temples.  Work, she told herself.  She should get back to work.  There was still so much to do and it didn't take a day off just because her aunt died.             She rolled over to grab her laptop case from beside the bed.  In the blue glow of the screen, she dug out the telephone cord to plug into the modem.  This would be easier at the Sanctuary, where she'd run a phone cord down to the computers she had smuggled in through the sewers, but she didn't want to go running through the sewers in her one good dress.             The modem made its high pitch beeps and screeches, which drew Becky to the bedroom.  "You're checking your email?" she asked.             "There might be something important."             "Probably just ads for penis enlargement."             But there was something important in her email.  Not her email per se, but the one registered to an anonymous account.  This was the email used to connect the Scarlet Knight and Detective Donovan of the police department—a much more reliable system Emma thought than a spotlight.             Like all of the emails from Detective Donovan, it was short and to the point.  'Urgent.  Meet at band pavilion.  Midnight.  DD.'  The band pavilion was in Robinson Park, a place previously off-limits to sane police officers until the evil Black Dragoon slaughtered the gang members who had frequented the place at night.  Since then, the gangs had taken up station elsewhere, perhaps superstitious about the ghosts of their comrades haunting them.             When Emma stood up, Becky stopped her.  "You can't go out tonight," she said.             "I have to.  Detective Donovan has some important information for me."             "It can wait."             "You don't know that.  This could be life and death."             "Emma, please.  I know you feel guilty about your aunt, but don't do this.  Don't run away like with your parents."             "I'm not running away.  I'm doing my job."             "Your job can wait this one time."             "What do you want me to do?  Sit around here crying all night?  There are other people dying out there and I can help them.  I can save them."             "Like you couldn't save her, is that it?"             "No."  Emma shrugged her shoulders helplessly.  "Becky, please.  I have a responsibility.  It's bigger than myself and my problems."             Becky sighed, stepping out of Emma's path.  "Just be careful.  Don't do anything crazy.  I don't want to go to your funeral for a long, long time."             "I'll be careful.  I promise," Emma said.  Then she said the magic words to summon the red case of plate armor and started suiting up.  It was time for the Scarlet Knight to go to work.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

            The band pavilion was mercifully located away from the pond, so that Emma didn’t have to see it during her meeting with the detective.  She parked her red motorcycle on a hill, where she would be able to see it from the pavilion.  If anyone tried to steal the Scarlet Knight’s bike, she had built in a few nasty surprises, such as a 50,000-volt shock that ran through the seat if anyone tried to start the engine when the security system was engaged.

            Through the visor of her helmet, she could see through the darkness as clearly as daytime, something that came in handy since the city hadn’t bothered to replace most of the light bulbs in the streetlamps.  The mayor claimed a shortage of funds, though Emma suspected it was a payoff from Don Vendetta to keep large chunks of the park in the dark, which helped facilitate shady dealings.

            Going after Don Vendetta had been Emma’s priority since the death of the Black Dragoon.  In eighteen months, though, she had made little headway on the problem.  The don was too tricky, covering her tracks well enough that the Scarlet Knight and the police couldn’t get any evidence on her.  This left Emma to fight the symptoms of the problems, the don’s henchmen who carried out her dirty deals.  No matter how many of them the Scarlet Knight pounded into submission and the police put in jail, there were always more.  None of those incarcerated ever turned state’s evidence either, fearing the don’s wrath not only once they got out of prison, but in prison as well.

            As she jogged down the hill, struggling to keep her balance in the heavy armor, Emma hoped Detective Donovan had some good news on that front.  She could use some good news right now, to help shake the pain of Aunt Gladys’s death.  Putting the don away, crippling organized crime in the city, might not make up for it entirely, but it would go a long way in helping.

            The detective stood on the pavilion stage, smoking a cigarette.  Several times Emma had gently suggested Detective Donovan kick the habit, but she always refused, claiming she didn’t plan to live long enough to get cancer.  “On these streets I should have died five years ago,” the detective had said once.

            Now Detective Donovan tossed her cigarette to the ground.  “That’s littering,” Emma said, careful to disguise her voice.  Not that she expected the detective to recognize her, but it was a good habit to get into.

            “You going to take me in?” Detective Donovan asked.  She compulsively reached into her black leather jacket for another cigarette.

            “No.  We have bigger fish to fry.”

            “You’re right about that.”  Detective Donovan paced the stage for a moment, finally jamming her hand in her pockets.  When she turned around, her cheeks were flushed.  “I hate meeting like this.  I hate needing a goddamned vigilante in a crazy getup to do my job.”

            Emma said nothing to this.  Detective Donovan often lamented needing the Scarlet Knight’s help, yet she continued to call on it.  In a city with as much corruption as Rampart City, sometimes a vigilante in a crazy getup was the only one you could on.

            Once the detective’s anger was spent, she said, “I got some information the other day from one of our prison snitches.  It’s about a case from almost fourteen years ago.  A real high-profile case.  If word gets out about it, the media is going to have a goddamned field day with it.”

            Detective Donovan pulled out another cigarette and lit it up.  She blew a trail of smoke towards Emma, who did her best not to cough.  “It was a real shitty case.  Someone broke into the home of a nice suburban couple and killed them.  There was a little girl hiding in a closet, they let her live.”  The detective blew another trail of smoke, but this time Emma didn’t even notice it.  Her entire body had frozen, processing what Detective Donovan had said in her mind.  Almost fourteen years ago, a suburban couple, a little girl left alive—her parents!

            “What did you find out?” she asked.

            “This snitch overheard some guys talking.  All third-hand stuff.  Probably a bunch of bullshit.”

            “What is it?”

            “He says he heard someone mention a couple of names.  A couple of small-time lowlifes named Roy French and Gomez Estima.  My guy says he overheard someone say they bragged about killing this suburban couple in a bar one night.”  Detective Donovan pitched her cigarette on the ground.  “I did some checking around.  French and Estima have gone to ground.  I squeezed a few of my sources.  No one knows where they’ve gone.  Of course if they’re smart, they’ve gone to Mexico by now.”

            “You want me to find them?”

            The detective nodded.  “I don’t want this going through official channels and some fucking reporter finding out about it.”  Detective Donovan reached into her coat for another cigarette.  She didn’t even get it lit before she threw it away angrily.  She glared at the Scarlet Knight.  “I know the little girl from the case.  Of course she isn’t little anymore.  She works at the museum.  Real nice kid, a sweetheart.  I don’t want some asshole reporter sticking a microphone in her face on live TV and making her cry and then having this all turn out to be a wild goose chase.  You get what I’m saying?”

            Emma nodded, unable to speak.  Finally, after all these years, she knew the names of the men who had killed her parents.  After all this time she had given up hope of ever finding out and here on the same day of Aunt Gladys’s funeral, the names were tossed right into her lap.  “I’ll help you.”

            “Good.  Just try to be discreet about it.  Like I said, I don’t want this getting out until we’ve got something solid.  I’ll keep working my end and you see what you can shake out.  Meet me back here in two days.  If you get something before then, send me an email through that account.”

            “I understand.”

            From her jacket, the detective produced a sheaf of documents.  It was a copy of the police report on her parent’s murder.  She folded it up, carrying it with her as she climbed back up the hill to her motorcycle.  After sticking the papers in a storage compartment, Emma kicked the cycle’s engine to life.

            She let the throttle out all the way, roaring along the dark streets of Rampart City.  Even past midnight there was still plenty of traffic.  She weaved her way through the cars, not caring at this moment how recklessly she drove.  She had wanted some good news and now she had it.

#

            Marlin waited for her in the Sanctuary.  He could go anywhere—or nearly anywhere—but he preferred to loiter around the Plaine Museum, under which Percival Graves had fashioned the Scarlet Knight’s Sanctuary in an old bomb shelter.  “I would have gone to the funeral if I could,” he said by way of greeting.

            “It’s all right.  I know how you feel about being around dead people.”

            “It’s not that I’m squeamish; I just feel odd around them.  Out of place, you know?”

            “I know.  It’s fine.”

            “I am sorry about your aunt.  I had an aunt once.  Several of them.  The last one was killed with a poisoned arrow during a raid.  She was an old maid—all of twenty-two.”

            “I’m twenty-two—almost,” Emma said.  She took off the helmet, tossing it onto the computer console.  Once she crashed down onto the leather chair, she took out the sheaf of documents Detective Donovan had given her.

            “I didn’t mean you’re an old maid.  Back then we didn’t live nearly so long.  You were old if you made it to thirty.  The real ancient ones were those who got to forty.”

            Emma half-listened as Marlin droned on about his ancient village in the wilds of Britain.  Normally she enjoyed listening to and razzing him about his stories, but not tonight.  Tonight she had far more serious things on her mind.

            “What’s that you got there?” the ghost of Merlin’s apprentice asked.

            “A police report from Detective Donovan.  It’s about my parents.  She might have some new information about who killed them.”

            “Really?  That’s wonderful.  Finally give the buggers what they deserve.”

            “Maybe.  She’s not sure how solid this lead is.”  Emma stopped reading, thinking for a moment about what Detective Donovan had said.  It touched her to hear the detective’s concern for her well being.  Too bad Detective Donovan didn’t realize by telling the Scarlet Knight she was telling Emma Earl.

            “Well then, go find them and squeeze them a little.”

            “Finding them might be the hard part.”

            The ghost nodded.  “You want me to poke around?  See what I can find?”

            “Not yet.  But thank you.”

            “I’m more than happy to help.  Never got a chance to get the ones who killed me.  By the time the master resurrected my spirit, they were already dead.  Nasty fever.  Shit themselves to death.  Seemed appropriate to me.  A good way for those buggers to go.”

            “This isn’t about revenge,” Emma said.  “Detective Donovan asked for my help on a case.  That’s all.  It’s just like all the others.”

            “If you say so.”

            She looked up at the ghost, wishing she could slap him.  “I’m going to look through the files and see what I can find on these names.  If I find any likely hangouts, I’ll ask you to give them a look.”

            “You can count on me.”

            “Thank you.”

            Marlin nodded.  If it were possible for a ghost to shift uncomfortably, he would have done so at that point.  “I think I’ll go upstairs.  See how that dinosaur egg collection is coming along.”

            “Fine, but don’t set off the motion detectors.  That drives the security guards nuts.”

            “Whose idea was it to install the bloody motion detectors?”

            “Just be careful.”

            “Yes, Mother,” the ghost grumbled.  He floated up through the ceiling of the sub-subbasement.  It had been Emma’s recommendation to install the motion detectors.  It made it more difficult for her to sneak around the museum, but she figured if it were more difficult for her, it would be far more difficult for someone else to break into the museum to steal its valuable artifacts.

            She looked through the file Detective Donovan had given her.  There was nothing in it she didn’t already know from having survived the incident.  Detective Donovan had been right, she had been hiding in the closet that night.  If not for a case of jitters, they might have opened the closet to find her hiding there.  She would have ended up as another victim in the tragedy.  That was the sun hiding behind the clouds in all this.  And soon the sun would come out and shine on those responsible.

#

            The little girl wheezed in her sleep.  Sweat plastered the thick bangs to her forehead, which the doctor brushed aside to feel her temperature.  “She’s still burning up,” he said to her parents.  “If it doesn’t break soon—”

            “Thank you, Doctor,” the girl’s father snapped.  His wife pressed against him, her body wracked with sobs.  Their little girl was dying.  It might be a day or even a few hours or perhaps if she was lucky she might hang on for a few more days.  None of them disputed that it would happen.  The seven-year-old was going to die.

            There was another presence in the room, one the doctor and parents could not see.  The little girl could see it, had been able to see it her entire life.  She turned her head to where it stood in the corner of the room.  “Marie?” she said.  “Tell me a story, Marie.”

            The doctor looked around the room.  “She’s delusional,” he said.

            The girl’s mother shook her head.  “No, Marie is her imaginary friend.  She’s talked about her for years.  She says this Marie is a young woman from the future.  Goes on all the time about the wonderful things that will happen.”

            “Well, at least her imagination isn’t suffering,” the doctor said.  “That’s a good sign.”  The doctor stood up, collecting the instruments into his black bag.  “I’ll be back to see her tomorrow.  In the meantime, keep her cool as best you can.”

            “We will.  Thank you, Doctor,” the girl’s father said.

            Her mother bent down to kiss her where the doctor had felt her temperature.  “You get some rest.  We’ll be up to see you later.”

            “Yes, Mama.”  The girl waited until they left before turning back to the corner.  “Marie, can you tell me a story?  I can’t sleep.”

            Marie Marsh wished she could take Veronica’s hand, to tell the little girl that it would be all right.  The man had promised it would be all right.  But she couldn’t touch Marie, not yet.  She was as transparent in the past as a ghost.  All she could do was hover next to Veronica’s bed and tell her yet another story about the world of the 21^st Century, a world Veronica would never live to see.  At this point she wouldn’t even live to see the 20^th Century.  Not unless the man did as he promised.

            By the time she finished a story about the miracle of airplanes, the little girl had fallen asleep.  She turned fitfully in her sleep, sometimes shivering and other times sweating from the fever.  The fever had taken hold of her a week ago, or at least a week ago in Veronica’s time.  For Marie it was nearly a hundred twenty years ago.  In Marie’s world Veronica would live.  But in this world the little girl would probably die in the night.

            The man who called himself the Watchmaker kept telling Marie that if she didn’t want to see this unpleasantness she could just as easily go back farther in time.  She could drill her way back to when Veronica was a carefree toddler.  If she tried hard enough, she could go back to when Veronica’s great-great-great-grandmother was a carefree toddler. 

            She could go farther back in time, but something kept drawing her here.  She had decided it was love.  Veronica had been her best and only friend for years, ever since Marie had come to the halfway house three years ago.  In that time she had watched over Veronica, comforting the little girl when she felt lonely or had a fight with her mother.  She couldn’t abandon Veronica now in her moment of greatest need because it was uncomfortable.  She would stick it out to the end.  It didn’t matter if the Watchmaker didn’t understand that.

            Content that Veronica would stay asleep for a little while, Marie drew herself slowly back through the hole in time to the present.  She emerged back in her own body, in the present.  She nearly jumped to the ceiling when she saw the old man sitting in the corner.  “Back so soon?” he said.

            “She fell asleep.”

            “How is little Veronica these days?”

            “Dying.  She doesn’t have long.”  Marie noticed the pile of machinery in the corner next to the old man who called himself the Watchmaker.  He had never given his real name and she never asked.  She did know that he was not a resident of the halfway house or the nursing home where she worked.  From what he said, he had been visiting the nursing home when he saw Marie use her power to comfort Emma Earl’s aunt, the woman whose funeral Marie had attended this afternoon.

            “A pity.  Of course you know she’s already dead.  She’s been dead for a hundred twenty years now.”

            “I know,” she snapped, not wanting another lecture on temporal mechanics.  She often wondered if the Watchmaker were some kind of physics professor in real life.  Maybe he worked at the Plaine Museum with Emma Earl.

            “Then you shouldn’t let it bother you so much.”

            “How long until you get your machine working?”

            The Watchmaker shrugged.  “A week.  Two maybe.”

            “You’ve been saying that for over a year.”

            “My dear, this is a touchy business.  It’s never been done before.  One doesn’t just go down to Wal-Mart and buy a time machine.”  He smiled, revealing two perfect rows of white teeth.  “Don’t fret, my fair Marie.  As I said, she’s already dead.  It doesn’t matter when we get it up and running.”

            “I just don’t want to see her die.”

            “Then don’t.  I’ve told you that numerous times.”

            “I can’t abandon her.  She’s my friend.”

            With a grunt the Watchmaker stood up.  “Don’t worry about it, my dear.  The time is almost at hand.  I swear it.  Soon you’ll be able to save your friend.”

            “OK,” Marie said, like always feeling terribly stupid in the old man’s presence.  She lay down on the bed, soon falling asleep just like Veronica.  Before she fell asleep, though, a horrible thought struck her.  If Veronica were already dead, then did that mean they hadn’t saved her?  She should ask the Watchmaker, but it would just lead to another of his boring lectures.  No, she would just hope that time was as fluid as he said.

#

            Becky parked the Dodge Stratus in the driveway of a house more decrepit than the car.  The yard of the tiny house was overgrown to the point that it came up to Becky’s armpits.  This yard concealed a variety of hazards:  old toys, sporting equipment, and even a lawnmower that had died valiantly while trying to combat the overgrowth.  Not to mention the veritable zoo that had made the lawn its home.  Knowing all this, Becky stayed on the cracked sidewalk leading up to the creaky porch.

            The porch light came on after her second knock.  The front door opened a moment later, Steve standing behind it.  He squinted at her, obviously roused too quickly from bed to fetch his glasses.  “Becky?  What are you doing here?  You said you’d drop the car off in the morning.”

            “I’m sorry.  Can I come in for a minute?”

            “Sure you can.”  He opened the rusty screen door for her and then took her arm.  “Is this about the funeral?”

            “Sort of.”  Becky tiptoed among the discarded pizza boxes, fast food wrappers, and beer bottles.  Steve dashed into the living room ahead of her, pushing aside a stack of Playboy magazines so that she could sit on the couch.

            It wasn’t that Steve was a slob so much as he didn’t have time to clean up after his two roommates who were slobs.  Besides attending Rampart State as a graduate student, he also worked as a teaching assistant and held down a part-time job at a convenience store.  That he had time to fit Becky in was one of many small miracles in their relationship.

            She had first met Steve Scherr in geology class, where he was assisting the teacher by handing out and grading papers.  She was sitting in the front row and he came up to her with a stack of tests to pass around.  The papers fell from his hands as if on their own, something Becky often thought was divine intervention.  Before she knew what was happening, she bolted around the desk to help him pick them up.

            “I’m sorry,” he said.

            “It’s OK,” she said.  That was all they said and yet there was a certain look that passed between them.  If not love at first love at first sight then at least a mutual attraction.  When she turned in her exam, which she passed easily thanks to Emma’s tutoring, she attached a note with her phone number on it.  She was shocked when he called that night, asking if she might need any tutoring, though it was obvious she was already set on that front.

            They had been together for the last six months, far longer than anyone else Becky had ever dated.  At some point soon she imagined things might get serious.  They hadn’t made love yet, not out of any religious objection but because Becky wanted to wait until she finished losing weight, so their first sex wouldn’t be fat sex.

            Steve pushed aside more papers, sinking next to her on the old plaid couch.  “How did Emma take it?” he asked.

            “About as well as could be expected, I guess.”

            “Well then, what’s wrong?”

            Becky ran a hand over her face, not quite sure what to say without giving away Emma’s secret life.  She would never forgive herself if she exposed her best friend like that, even if it were only to Steve.  As the old saying went, loose lips sink ships.  She wouldn’t let anyone sink Emma, not while she could help it.

            “It’s just that afterwards she went back to work.  Like it was a normal day.”

            “Oh.  Well—” Steve’s voice trailed off.  She thought maybe he had passed out.  “Maybe that’s just how she copes.”

            “That’s the problem, she doesn’t cope.  Like when her parents died.  She threw herself into schoolwork and then that job at the museum and then—” she cut herself off before she could blurt out anything about Emma’s other job.  “And it took her over a decade before she finally faced up to what happened.”

            Becky had to resist saying more about how Emma had faced up to her past.  It had been the strangest experience of Becky’s life, wherein Emma had somehow become four years old again and gone rampaging through the city to find her dead mommy.  Only by seeking out Mrs. Chiostro and taking a potion to temporarily make herself a toddler as well had Becky been able to talk some sense into Emma.  She prayed it wouldn’t take anything nearly so dramatic for Emma to deal with her aunt’s death.

            “Give her a little time.  You can’t expect her to come to grips with it right away.”

            “I’m just worried,” Becky said.  She rolled over on the couch, pressing her head into Steve’s lap, where he could gently stroke her hair.  Another man might have deemed to do more, but not Steve.  He had no ulterior motives in that regard.

            He was a lot like Emma in that way.  The two had never met, but Becky was certain they would hit it off.  For one thing, Steve knew almost as much about science as Emma.  For another, they could easily have passed for brother and sister.  Looking at Steve, with his red hair, blue eyes, and glasses was like looking at a male version of Emma.  That fact had not occurred to her right away, but when it did it resulted in several sleepless nights.  Did she like Steve because he was so much like Emma?  Did she have a subconscious yearning to be more than a best friend to her best friend?  In the end she had pushed these dark thoughts aside, focusing only on Steve.

            “Of course you’re worried,” he said gently.  “She’s your best friend.”

            “Yes,” Becky said.  But she and Emma were far more than best friends.  Becky had made a promise to Emma’s mother to stay by Emma’s side no matter what.  When Emma’s mother died, Becky took that promise seriously, even when Emma went out to California for her PhD they had remained in almost constant contact.  Many times Becky felt Emma was more like her child than a best friend or a sister.  “Thank you.”

            “That’s what I’m here for.”

            She nodded, starting to doze off in his lap.  She sat bolt upright again.  “Oh shit.  How am I going to get home now?”

            “Just stay here tonight,” he said.  He quickly added, “I’ll sleep on the couch and you can have my bed.”

            Becky considered this.  She should go back to the apartment to wait for Emma, but there was no guarantee Emma would come back before four or five in the morning.  Sometimes she didn’t show up at all, catching a nap in that Sanctuary of hers before going to her real job.  Becky promised to wake up early and call the apartment, wishing for the millionth time Emma could carry a cell phone or pager with her as the Scarlet Knight.  Maybe Mrs. Chiostro’s sister could come up with some way for them to keep in touch.  It would make these nights a lot easier.

            She forced a smile to her face.  “All right,” she said.  “Just don’t go telling your buddies you scored.  Wouldn’t want them to think I’m easy.”

            “I would never do that,” he said in all seriousness.

            She sighed, sometimes wishing he wasn’t so much like Emma.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Emma didn’t return home that night. She spent the rest of the night trying to turn up something on French and Estima. All she could pull up on the computer was their rap sheets. These listed a series of minor offenses ranging from vandalism and stealing cars in their teens to robbing convenience stores in their adult years. Both had done short hitches in juvenile hall and jail, like most of the thugs the Scarlet Knight put behind bars. The only difference was that these thugs had killed her parents—maybe.

In reading their rap sheets, Emma saw no evidence of violent crime for either of them. No records of assault or especially murder. This gave her pause for a moment. Certainly they were criminals, but were they murderers? She didn’t know. The only way to find out would be to locate them. The Sword of Justice would tell her if they were really evil or not.

She fell asleep on the cot in one corner. Marlin didn’t return from exploring the museum, or if he did, he didn’t wake her up with any of his stories about the old days or complaints about museum security. Emma slept for only a couple of hours, which she had grown used to over the last eighteen months of living a double life. When the alarm went off a seven the next morning, she rolled out of the cot and stumbled over to the mini refrigerator by rote for a can of Red Bull. The energy drink ran through her with a jolt, shocking her into wakefulness.

There was no shower per se in the Sanctuary, but there was a valve for a water pipe leading into the museum that when opened provided a spray of cold water. Cold showers were another thing she had become accustomed to since becoming the Scarlet Knight. She just hoped Marlin didn’t choose now to show up, as she didn’t like the thought of him seeing her naked, even if he were only a ghost.

For emergencies like this she left a pile of clothes in one corner. She picked out a blouse and skirt; she kept a package of stockings in her desk upstairs. Her hair was still wet, but she doubted anyone would notice, and if they did she would say that she had been out for a run before showing up at work. Satisfied that she at least looked presentable, she ducked through the Sanctuary door, into the old bomb shelter. After sealing the false wall behind her, she went over to the elevator.

The elevator took her up through the sub-basement, first floor of special galleries, and second floor of exhibits to the third floor of administrative offices. Her office was at the end of a long hallway, her name and title as Director of Geology Department printed on the frosted glass. At twenty-one she was by far the youngest director in the history of the Plaine Museum, and for that matter in the history of any museum. There had been some whispering in the halls at first among her colleagues, but she silenced them by doing an effective and efficient job. Even the staunchest critics had to admit she was more than capable enough as an administrator and researcher.

“Good morning, Dr. Earl,” said Leslie Miles, her secretary. One thing Emma had not become used to in eighteen months was having a secretary at her beck and call. She had been lucky to get a secretary like Leslie Miles, a cheery middle-aged woman who had worked in the Plaine Museum for fifteen years and done a stint at the Louvre before that.

“Good morning,” Emma said. She hurried to her office door, feeling as always as if she were breaking into her own office. The office had belonged to Ian MacGregor before her, until Ian had taken up the armor of the Black Dragoon and finally killed himself at the realization of what he’d become. Emma had been the only witness to his death, the only one who knew the truth. Sometimes she could still smell Ian’s pipe tobacco or hear his Scottish accent whisper something in her ear.

As she booted up her computer, Leslie brought in a mug of coffee and the mail. She went through the mail with Emma, explaining the significance of each. There was nothing really important, just the usual budgetary reports and notes about prospective donors. All of it could wait until later. “Thanks,” she said shyly. Leslie nodded and then did a smart about-face to return to her desk.

Her email held similar items, none of them important. Then she came to the bottom of the list and shivered. The last email came from Dan Dreyfus, who had briefly been Emma’s boyfriend eighteen months earlier, until he took the opportunity to return to Egypt for an archaeological expedition. Emma had initiated this by using one of Mrs. Chiostro’s potions to plant a suggestion in Dan’s mind that he forget her and go far away. At the time it had seemed the only way to keep him safe. Other times she wondered if it been selfishness on her part, banishing him so she wouldn’t have to feel the pain so acutely.

Roughly every two weeks, Dan sent an email to the museum directors, apprising them of his work’s status. His access to the Internet was sporadic in the wilds of Egypt, but it was still easier and faster than mailing a letter. As yet he had not discovered anything too groundbreaking, but he remained confident he would find something soon. “We’re getting close,” he said. “I can feel it.”

His emails were always enough to bring tears to her eyes. She wanted so badly to be with him, to have a normal life, but it wasn’t possible. She had answered The Call and taken up the mantle of the Scarlet Knight. That meant a responsibility to the city and all its people. It was something she couldn’t neglect, not even for her own heart.

She turned in her chair to look out the single window in her office as she drank her mug of coffee. There were more important things at the moment than even Dan. Somewhere out there were the possible killers of her parents. Finding them and bringing them to justice was her top priority, what she needed to focus all of her energy on.

Turning back to her computer, she bypassed the museum’s security program to gain access to the city administrative computers, looking for more information on French and Estima. The addresses on both rap sheets were for seedy motels in the Trenches, the kind of places criminals used as a base for a few weeks before moving on. It was more likely they were in one of the multitude of abandoned warehouses or office buildings in the city, hunkering down with the homeless. There was little chance that even the Scarlet Knight could find them in such places, not unless she got extraordinarily lucky.

Her strategy then would have to be to track down acquaintances and accomplices of the two. Someone was bound to have seen them at some point. It might give her a lead as to where they had gone. Using the city computers, she tracked down the current address for French’s ex-wife and mother as well as Estima’s three older sisters. She printed these out on a sheet of paper, which she tucked into her purse for later.

Only then did she turn to the stack of mail Leslie had brought in. Work, she told herself. Focus on getting the work done. By noon she finished with the mail and emails. She snatched her purse from atop her desk and slung it over her shoulder. “I’m going out for lunch,” she said to Leslie, hoping the guilt wasn’t too obvious on her face. “I’ll be gone for a couple of hours.”

“I understand, Dr. Earl,” the secretary said. Emma wondered if Leslie thought she was going out to meet some man at a seedy motel like those where French and Estima had lived. Well, it wasn’t too far from the truth.

#

Veronica was still alive the next morning. Her fever remained high, to the point where she was barely conscious. She called out Marie’s name, but showed no sign of recognition even when Marie called out to her.

Marie pulled out, back to the present. She hardly flinched this time when she saw the Watchmaker sitting in the corner. “Your friend take a turn for the worst?” he asked.

“Yes.” Marie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. At times like this she wondered what the Watchmaker did for a living that he seemed to be able to show up at any time of the day. “She’s going to die soon.”

“Well, I have some good news for both of you. We’re very close to completing the prototype.”

“You’ve been saying that for months.”

“This time it’s true. But first, we need to obtain some equipment.”

“I don’t have a lot of money.”

“Yes, I know. That is why I propose we borrow what we want. There’s a laboratory at the university that has what we need.”

“You want to steal the equipment?”

“Borrow, my dear. We’ll return it after we’re done. After we’ve saved your friend.”

Marie shifted uncomfortably on the bed as she thought about this. She didn’t like the idea of stealing, especially from a school. And yet, if it could save Veronica, wouldn’t that make it worthwhile? Wasn’t saving a life more important than whatever research the scientists were doing at the university?

“What do you want me to do?”’

“Not much. I only need you to keep watch. I’ll handle the rest.”

“You aren’t going to hurt anyone, are you?”

“Of course not. Unless they try to hurt me first.”

Marie didn’t like the sound of this, but didn’t say anything. She hated the idea of killing someone—even in self-defense—more than the idea of the theft. But then she thought of Veronica lying in bed, her body covered in sweat and thrashing around while she desperately called Marie’s name. She needs me, Marie thought. I have to help her.

“What time do you need me there?”

“About seven should suffice. Make sure no one follows you.”

“I will.”

“Excellent.” The Watchmaker checked the gold watch on his wrist. “Now, my dear, I think it’s time you get off to work. I’ll see you tonight.”

“OK.” The Watchmaker stood up and left, leaving Marie sitting alone on the bed. Tonight she would become a criminal, but it was for the best. Even someone as good as Emma Earl would have to admit that a minor theft was worth it to save a life.

“It won’t be long,” she whispered, hoping that in her fevered dreams, Veronica could hear her.

#

The first name on the list was Margarita Estima. She lived in a tenement in the Trenches, not far from Aunt Gladys’s old apartment. The hallways of the tenement were filthy, lined with garbage and graffiti. She wished she could have brought the Sword of Justice for protection, but a golden sword was not easily concealed.

The elevator for the tenement was broken, which meant Emma had to climb up five flights of stairs. This didn’t bother her; she wasn’t even winded by the time she reached the top. That would at least make up for the run she had missed this morning.

She knocked on Margarita Estima’s door and waited. When it opened, she at first didn’t see anyone. Then she looked down to see a small girl standing there. “Who you?” the little girl asked, showing no fear of the stranger.

Emma knelt down to look the child in the eye. “I’m looking for your mommy. Is she home?”

The little girl turned and screamed, “Mama! A lady at the door!” Then the girl stood there, staring defiantly at Emma. This unnerved Emma a little as she realized this girl was Estima’s niece. How could someone with a cute niece like this be such a monster?

“Are you a cop?” an adult voice hissed.

Emma stood up to find a young woman standing behind the little girl. The woman was younger than Emma, still a teenager. “No, ma’am,” Emma stammered. “I’m with the Plaine Museum. I’ve been trying to reach Gomez Estima.”

“He owe you money?” the woman asked.

“Not at all.” Emma cleared her throat, summoning the courage to deliver the cover story she had thought up on the way over. She only hoped Margarita Estima bought it, as Emma had never been very adept at lying. “I’m trying to offer him a job. A janitorial position opened up and we received his resume, but we haven’t been able to contact him.”

“I don’t know where he is. I told that cop yesterday.” Emma flinched at this. She should have known Detective Donovan would already have covered these bases before enlisting the Scarlet Knight’s help.

“Oh, well, that’s too bad. If you do see him, here’s my card.”

Margarita Estima took the card, pulled her daughter back, and then slammed the door in Emma’s face. One down and five to go, she thought.

#

The other two sisters—Anita and Teresa—weren’t any more helpful. Like Margarita, they assumed Emma was a cop and mentioned Detective Donovan had already been there to interview them. Emma gave them her card, hoping that one of them might give it to Gomez Estima and he might contact her about the fake job.

With this taken care of, Emma turned her attention to French’s family. His ex-wife had remarried and moved to a small house in Westfield. It was a long ride out there on Emma’s motorcycle as she obeyed the speed limit this time, not wanting to get a ticket that might call attention to the Scarlet Knight’s bike. Along the way she had plenty of time to go over the interviews with Estima’s sisters again to wonder if they had been lying or not. She had sensed nothing evil about them, nothing to indicate anything but resentment. Whether this resentment was directed at her or their brother she didn’t know.

The subdivision in Westfield looked similar to those that had popped up all around Rampart City in recent years. McCondos, as Becky referred to them because they were built so quickly. Emma read the numbers of the townhouse condos until she found the one differentiating the former Mrs. French’s from the others.

The condo looked innocent enough, with a child’s bike abandoned on the front yard and a swing set in the back. Suburban bliss, like the kind her parents had sought when Emma was born. That bliss had ended in a nightmare. With renewed determination, she went to the door and knocked.

A plain, haggard-looking woman answered. She looked more like the mother in an advertisement for paper towels or TV dinners than the ex-wife of a murderer. “Can I help you?” the former Mrs. French asked.

“Hello, Mrs. Perry, my name is Emma Earl. I work for the Plaine Museum.”

“Are you collecting donations?”

“Yes, ma’am, but I’d also like to tell you about the exciting new exhibits we have to offer that would be of interest to you and your family.” Emma delivered all this in a monotone she doubted would be very effective. Selling was just another form of lying to her.

To her surprise, Mrs. Perry motioned for her to come inside. “Would you like something to drink?” she asked. “Coffee? Tea?”

“Just a glass of water would be fine,” Emma said.

“Make yourself comfortable on the couch. I’ll be right back.”

Emma didn’t make herself comfortable on the couch. Instead she took the opportunity to snoop around the Perry’s living room. There were pictures on the walls and mantle of a seemingly happy, normal family: Mrs. Perry, her average-looking husband, a pigtailed little girl, and a towheaded little boy. They could easily have passed for the kind of family seen in pictures that come with a new photo frame. None of these pictures showed Roy French. She wondered if Mrs. Perry kept one of him someplace secret, like her lingerie drawer. She doubted she would have the opportunity to find out. What am I doing here?

Mrs. Perry cleared her throat. Emma turned to find the other woman standing in the doorway, a glass of water in her hands. “You’ve got a beautiful family,” Emma said.

“Yes, I do.” Mrs. Perry handed the water to Emma, who was grateful for the chance to buy some time. She sat on the couch, Mrs. Perry taking a chair across from her. “So, Ms. Earl, what do you do at the museum?”

“I work in the geology department mostly. Our admissions have been down lately, so we thought maybe a more personal invitation would be helpful.” Emma fumbled in her purse, digging out some pamphlets she always kept to hand out to anyone who might be interested in the museum.

Mrs. Perry studied these pamphlets for a few moments, making interested-sounding noises. “I used to go to the museum when I was a little girl. I lived in the city back then. I haven’t really had a chance to go back since.”

“The museum is a wonderful place for children,” Emma said. She had become fascinated with the museum as a small child when a janitor, Percival Graves, let her touch Alex the mastodon. “And our admissions are really affordable, especially compared to the price of a movie or ball game. For the same price of going to one game, you can get a season pass for your entire family.”

“Yes, I see that. It’s all very interesting. You know, of course, I’ll have to talk it over with my husband.”

“I understand. I hope to see you there.”

Mrs. Perry nodded. “How many of these meetings have you done so far?”

“Three.” Emma considered this more of an exaggeration than a lie.

“Any success so far?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I hope you don’t mind my saying, but you seem awfully young to be working at the museum. Is this part of an internship program or something?”

“No, I have a PhD in geology.”

“That’s amazing. You must be pretty smart.”

“I guess so.”

“Not like me. I’ve done some pretty not smart things in my life.” Mrs. Perry shook her head sadly. For the first time, Emma noticed the smell of alcohol on the woman’s breath. Clearly everything wasn’t storybook bliss in the Perry household. “Are you married, Ms. Earl?”

“No.”

“When I was your age I was already married to a real creep. Roy French.” Mrs. Perry shook her head again. “Such an asshole, always getting himself in trouble one way or another. Never had more than two dimes to rub together.”

“That’s awful. But at least you got away from him.”

“Sure, but not until the second time he got thrown in jail. That was when I wised up. I guess I was just being stubborn.” Mrs. Perry laughed self-pityingly. “I had hardly thought of him in years and then yesterday he came by here. Can you believe it? After all these years he shows up on my doorstep with Tim and the kids inside.”

“What did he want?”

“Money, of course. And a place to hide. He said someone was after him. Wouldn’t say who, only that they were going to get him. Of course I had to send him packing. I couldn’t let him around my kids.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial level. “And I never told Tim about Roy. He thinks he’s the only one and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Did he go away?”

“Sure, but only after I gave him all the money in my purse. I never could say no to those puppy dog eyes of his. Poor bastard.” Mrs. Perry reached out to put a hand on Emma’s shoulders. “If you’re really smart, don’t ever fall in love. It’s nothing but trouble.”

Emma nodded, thinking of Dan. “It sure is.”

#

On many nights, Steve Scherr worked late in the lab at Rampart State. It was the only time he could use the lab alone, without students inadvertently blowing things up or teachers looking over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t blow anything up. As a teaching assistant and graduate student, he had earned a key to the labs, which gave him twenty-four hour access.

Tonight, as he performed an experiment, he found himself unable to concentrate on his work. The encounter with Becky last night had preyed on his mind all day. The thought of her head in his lap at the time had seemed unimportant and yet with each passing hour it loomed larger on his mind.

He hadn’t gone “all the way” with Becky yet. He hadn’t even gotten past second-base with her. They kissed often enough, often with their tongues, but they had never gone to bed together. She had not let him see her without her clothes off yet, displaying her body just a little at a time. Teasing him, some people would say. Steve liked to think of it as they were moving slowly, taking it at their own pace. There was no hurry.

Or at least he’d thought so until last night. Then, when Becky put her head in his lap, he started to see what he was missing. Not so much the sex as the intimacy, the being close to her. That’s what he wanted most of all. If only she would give it to him.

He knew a little bit about Becky’s history. She struggled with her weight, a battle she was winning at the moment. She came from a broken home, where she had been forced at a young age to care for her younger siblings. He suspected there had been physical or even sexual abuse involved, but Becky hadn’t said anything about it yet. At some point she might, once she trusted him enough to open up.

There was one topic she was open about and that was her friend Emma. It often seemed like Becky discussed Emma more than herself. Despite this, she had never arranged for Steve to meet Emma. He didn’t know if Emma even knew about him. That was something else he hoped Becky would remedy, when she felt ready.

He had considered going to find Emma himself. Everyone in the science department knew about Emma Earl. She was something of a legend in the scientific community, a girl so gifted she had earned a PhD at eighteen. Some of the teachers at Rampart State considered it a waste that she had gone to work for the Plaine Museum. “It’s like Einstein working at McDonald’s,” one of his colleagues had said.

Steve didn’t have an opinion one way or another. It wasn’t his place to judge what someone else did with her life. He would like to meet her, though, to discuss her thoughts on geology—and Becky. As Becky’s best friend since kindergarten there had to be a lot Emma knew about Becky, a lot Becky hadn’t shared with him. If he knew these things, maybe they could push things to the next level.

A crash interrupted his thoughts. It hadn’t come from his laboratory, but one down the hall. He wondered if one of the janitors had knocked something over. Or it could have been a security guard. Or it might be some student playing around in the lab after hours. With a sigh, Steve decided he should check it out.

The first warning sign was that there were no lights on in any of the other laboratories. If someone had accidentally knocked something over, wouldn’t they turn on a light to sweep it up? That wasn’t enough to call the campus police about, though. Still, he slowed his walk, tiptoeing along the hallway so as not to make a sound.

From seemingly nowhere, a girl appeared in his path. She was rail-thin and pale as chalk, with wild black hair that fell into her face. She looked like a corpse come back to life, an evil spirit haunting the corridors of the science building. “Who are you?” he said.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Are you a student here?”

The girl pushed back her wild hair so that he could see black eyes that did not to look at him so much as through him. Steve backed a step away. “No,” she said. “I’m not.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

The girl looked back towards one of the labs. “I’m not supposed to tell.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“No.” The girl looked back to the lab again and then sighed. “I’m trying to save my friend’s life. We’re only going to borrow a couple of things.”

“Now hold on—” Steve didn’t get any farther as something heavy smashed into the back of his head. He dropped to the ground, rolling over to see an older man had joined the girl.

“Not much of a lookout, but you do make an excellent distraction, my dear,” the older man said.

“Is he hurt?” the girl asked.

“Not seriously. Just a bit of a headache. Now, let’s get moving.”

Steve tried to get up to follow them, but his body wouldn’t respond. Darkness pressed around him, welcoming him. He gave in.

#

The former Mrs. French had said her ex-husband thought someone was after him. In Rampart City, that meant that someone was connected to Don Vendetta. The don conducted most of her business from a lesbian strip club, the Plastic Hippo. Detective Donovan had raided the place several times, but someone in the department always tipped off the don, who made sure not to have anything illicit going on when the cops arrived.

The Scarlet Knight had visited the club once. She had hoped with her golden cape wrapped around her, no one would be able to see her. But Don Vendetta wasn’t an idiot; she had video cameras mounted all over the club that could see what human eyes couldn’t. That brief trip to the Plastic Hippo had ended with the Scarlet Knight breaking the jaws and kneecaps of a handful of thugs before making a hasty getaway.

Emma Earl had been to the club as well. At the time Emma had appeared to be a pimple-faced teenager while still recovering from a wound inflicted by the Black Dragoon. If not for intervention by Becky, Mrs. Chiostro, and her sister Sylvia, Emma would have ended up at the bottom of the harbor in cement shoes.

Given all this, Emma didn’t try entering the Plastic Hippo for a third time. The don’s henchmen hung out at other places with far less security. The horse track across the river was one such place. Still dressed as Emma Earl, she had placed a bet on the next race and then sat down in the stands. In the front row she recognized Sally Pomponio, one of the don’s lieutenants. The woman herself was not all that recognizable, just an ordinary middle-aged woman in a floppy-brimmed hat like most of the other women at the track. What tipped Emma off were the half-dozen burly men surrounding her. They couldn’t have been any more obvious if they had a neon sign overhead.

Retreating to the nearest bathroom, Emma said the magic words to summon the crate of armor to her. She only hoped no one else needed to use the bathroom while she changed into the armor. She strapped on the leg pieces, arm pieces, and breastplate. Then she donned the golden boots, gloves, and cape. The final piece as always was the helmet. She always took a deep breath before putting it on. Once she did, there was no going back, she was the Scarlet Knight.

Wrapping the cape around her, she disappeared to all but the most innocent eyes. It was fortunate not many children went to the horse races. With the cape wrapped around her, she loitered by a pillar at the top of the stairs. There she waited for the races to end and for Pomponio to emerge from the front row.

This took longer than Emma had hoped. The don’s lieutenant sat through not only that race but also the three after it. Emma had no idea if Pomponio won any money or not. No matter what happened, she was going to be a loser tonight.

At last the races ended and the woman started up. Three of her goons led the way, clearing a path for her. Two more trailed behind to make sure no one got the jump on their boss. These were adequate protections against any normal assailant, but not against the Scarlet Knight. She had only to wait until the first three goons passed and then reach out to grab Pomponio’s arm. The woman screamed, prompting all five guards to draw their guns.

It was too late, though, as Emma already had thrown the woman over her shoulder and bounced onto the roof of the building. She sprinted away from the goons, running down along the sloping roof, towards the fence below. As she neared the edge, she hopped up and down three times, priming her boots for a long jump. With the screaming mobster still draped over her shoulder, the Scarlet Knight sailed over the fence, to the ground below. In the last eighteen months she had practiced her landings enough so that even with the extra weight she only staggered a few steps before regaining her footing.

She didn’t go very far after that. Clamping a hand over Pomponio’s mouth, Emma hauled the mobster into the stables. “I want you to be very quiet,” the Scarlet Knight hissed. Then she tossed Pomponio into a bed of hay used by one of the racehorses.

“You’re dead! They’re going to find you—”

Emma clamped her hand over the woman’s mouth. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. Do you understand?” Pomponio’s eyes smoldered, but she nodded. When Emma took her hand away, the woman didn’t say anything. “Thank you. Now, I want to know what you know about Roy French and Gomez Estima.”

“That’s who you’re after? They’re nothing. Small fish.”

“How small?”

“Real small. They shaved a couple grand off a deal.” Pomponio smiled. “If you want them, you better hurry up. They’ll be dead before much longer.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know. Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. We’ll take care of them.”

Emma glared at Pomponio, wanting more than anything to break the woman’s nose, followed closely by running her face through a wall. She could do that as easily as snapping a twig. Yet if she did, she wouldn’t be worthy to wear the armor anymore. She had to settle for saying, “Give them to me and no one will get hurt.”

Pomponio snorted at this feeble threat. “You got nothing on the don. If you did you’d have already taken her in. Now why don’t you let me out of here? It smells like shit.”

“One more thing,” Emma said. “What do you know about the murder of Carl and Louise Earl?”

“Who?”

“They were a suburban couple. French and Estima murdered them fourteen years ago. What do you know about it?”

“Oh, that. Collateral damage in a botched job.”

Emma’s fists clenched. Her parents were more than “collateral damage.”. The urge to run Pomponio through the wall rose up in her again, but she resisted. Instead, she said, “Time to say goodnight.” She took no small amount of pleasure in punching Pomponio in the face, though only hard enough to knock her out. She allowed herself the other small pleasure of rolling the mobster into a pile of horseshit, where her goons would find her later.

Then she wrapped the cape around herself and disappeared into the night.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

            When Steve didn’t show up for their date, Becky started to worry.  He had never stood her up before.  She waited in front of the restaurant for an extra half-hour, calling his cell phone every five minutes to leave him a message.  All of the calls went to voicemail.  Collapsing on a park bench, she put her head in her hands.

            Was this because of what happened the night before?  Had she scared him off by showing up at his house at night and sleeping in his bed?  At the time he had acted fine with it, as gentle and supportive as ever.  Maybe given a day to think about it he had reconsidered.  Maybe he didn’t want to be with her anymore.

            She told herself not to panic.  There could be a perfectly good explanation for everything.  He might be delayed in traffic.  He might be working late at the lab.  Or he might be dead, lying facedown in an alley like so many others in the city.  Not even the Scarlet Knight could stop all of them.

            Getting to her feet, she decided to try the most logical explanation first.  She hailed a cab, telling the driver to take her to Rampart State.  Along the way, she continued trying Steve’s phone in case he suddenly turned it on.  What if he was with someone else?  What if he didn’t find her attractive anymore?  These thoughts gnawed at her as the cab drove on.  No, she told herself over and over again.  Steve wouldn’t do that.  He isn’t like that.

            Her fears were partially assuaged when the cab pulled into the parking lot at the science building and she saw the gold Stratus sitting in the lot.  That meant Steve was inside—unless he had gone off with someone else.  Nevertheless, she paid the driver and got out.

            She didn’t have a key to the science building, but that didn’t matter, as the door was unlocked.  This gave her pause.  When Steve worked late, he didn’t leave the doors unlocked.  Steve might have forgotten, but that wasn’t like him.  He didn’t forget things like that.

            She crept down the hallway, reaching in her purse for a tube of mace.  She had taken to carrying this after nearly being raped in an alley, saved only when the Scarlet Knight showed up to rescue her.  If Emma hadn’t been there—Becky didn’t like to contemplate that.  Emma objected to Becky carrying a gun, so the mace was a good compromise.  The tube didn’t make her feel much better when she held it in her hand, though.  It was too small and insubstantial, without the comforting weight of a gun.  Still, it was all she had.

            Turning a corner, she saw him lying in the hallway.  Becky sprinted down the hallway, dropping to her knees beside him.  “Steve?  Are you all right?  Can you hear me?”  He didn’t seem to be bleeding from anywhere, which she took as a good sign.  Unless he’d suffered some kind of internal injuries.  “Wake up!” she shouted.

            As if by magic, he woke up.  He looked around him, groaning.  When he saw Becky, he smiled.  “Hi,” he said.

            “Hi yourself,” she said.  She helped him into a sitting position, where he rubbed the back of his head gingerly.  “What happened?”

            “Someone robbed the lab.  This girl and an older guy.  I don’t know who they were.”

            “Who would want to rob a lab?”

             “Some of the equipment is worth thousands of dollars.”

            “Yeah but it’s not like you can unload it at the nearest pawn shop.”

            “I guess.”  He got unsteadily to his feet; Becky grabbed his shoulder to keep him from falling down.  “We better call the police.”

            They waited in the lab, which looked almost untouched.  “That’s odd,” Steve said.  “They only took the power regulator and thermal imager.”

            “Are those worth a lot?”

            “Sure, about ten thousand at least.  But like you said, it’s not like a pawnshop would take them.  It’s really specialized stuff for physics experiments.  Smashing atoms and all that.”

            “Like making a nuclear bomb?”

            “I doubt that.  You’d need a lot more than those to do that.”

            The police arrived ten minutes later.  Becky was disappointed Emma’s friend Detective Donovan wasn’t among them; this was probably too small a case for her.  The officer in charge was a shifty little man, who kept shoving pieces of gum into his mouth until Becky imagined he would end up choking on a wad of the stuff.

            The officer took Steve’s description of his attackers.  “A young woman with black hair and pale skin and an old guy with a mustache?” the officer asked.

            “Yes,” Steve said.  “I didn’t get a good look at the old guy.  He snuck up on me.”

            “Yeah, those old gents are wily.”  The officer snapped his notebook shut.  “We’ll see what we can do.  You didn’t get a look at their getaway vehicle?”

            “No.  I was in the lab when they showed up.”

            “Well, if I were you I’d go home and get some sleep.”  The officer turned towards the door, stopping to spit out a massive green wad of gum on his way out.

            “They aren’t going to find them,” Steve said.

            “I know.  But maybe we’ll get lucky.”

            “I wouldn’t count on that.”  Steve rubbed his head again, letting Becky take him back to the car to drive him home.

#

            With so many abandoned buildings in Rampart City, it wasn’t difficult to find one to use for their purposes.  The Watchmaker had settled on a deserted jewelry store, setting up his equipment in the old vault down in the basement.  Marie waited at the top of the stairs, not wanting to go down there.  Outside the vault were puddles of water—and rats.  These didn’t bother the Watchmaker, but they gave Marie the chills.

            At some point she would have to go down there.  She knew that.  Their whole operation depended on her.  She was the key.  Or as the Watchmaker said, she was the engine driving the rest of the machine.  Without her, nothing would happen.  Veronica would die from that fever.

            This thought gave her another cold shiver.  There wasn’t much time left before Marie would have to watch Veronica die.  The Watchmaker would tell her that she could put it off as along as she wanted.  After all, it had already happened.  It had happened over a century before Marie had been born.  A death like any other, with a few tears shed locally because of the victim’s youth.  No one else knew or cared about it and within a few months, no one but Veronica’s family would even remember it had happened.

            It didn’t have to be that way.  Not if she and the Watchmaker were successful.  They would save Veronica and she wouldn’t die for a long, long time.  She could become a doctor or lawyer or president.  She could be whatever she wanted to be, so that when she did finally die as an old, old lady everyone would remember and mourn her.

            From downstairs she heard the sound of metal pounding on metal.  With the equipment taken from the laboratory they were almost finished.  It wouldn’t be much longer before they could try the machine.  Then they could save her.

            The Watchmaker was covered in sweat, his face dirty except around his eyes, where he had worn safety goggles.  “We’re almost there, my dear,” he announced.

            “How much longer?”

            “I’d say twenty-four hours.  There’s just one more critical component I’ll need.”

            “What’s that?”

            “Patience, my dear.  We’ll see it tomorrow.”

            “OK.”  Marie took the Watchmaker’s hand.  It was sweaty but firm and calloused.  Whatever else he did, the Watchmaker was not someone who spent all day reading.  He had worked for a living.  She found this somehow comforting for their prospects.  He wasn’t just some pie-in-the-sky inventor; he was someone capable of building a machine like they needed.

            They went out to the van they had rented—or at least he claimed to have rented it.  He would have to drive her home, as she didn’t have a license.  There had never been any chance for her to learn, not in the institution or at the halfway house.

            Along the way they said nothing, listening to jazz on the van’s radio.  The Watchmaker didn’t bob his head to the music or show any sign of hearing it.  The music was merely noise to cover for the lack of conversation.  He stopped the van in front of the halfway house.  She wondered if anyone had noticed her absence.  If so, then she would be in trouble.  They could give her a bad report and she’d be sent back to the institution.

            “Tomorrow, my dear, we make history,” the Watchmaker said, interrupting her thoughts.  She nodded at this.  It didn’t matter if they took her back to the institution; by then she would have saved her friend.  That was all that mattered.

#

             Becky waited in the kitchen for Emma to arrive.  As usual, Emma announced her arrival with the clank of armor on the floor.  She never came in through the front door, always preferring the fire escape.  That had been one of the chief selling points of their new apartment.

            Becky waited a few minutes for Emma to take off the armor before she went back to Emma’s bedroom.  It was the smaller of the two bedrooms even though Emma paid the majority of the rent.  “I won’t be using it that much,” Emma had claimed.  This certainly looked the case, as she kept little in the room except her bed, a chest of drawers, and stacks of books.  At the moment Emma sat on the bed, holding the Scarlet Knight’s helmet in her hands.

            “How’d it go tonight?”

            “About the same,” Emma said.  “Slow, steady progress.”

            Becky sat down next to her, putting an arm around her friend’s shoulders.  “Keep your chin up, kid.  Things will get better.”

            “I hope so.”

            “I don’t want to add to your troubles, but something happened tonight at Rampart State.  Someone robbed the science lab.”

            “Really?”

            “Yeah, they took a couple pieces of equipment.   A thermal something and power doohickey.  I’m not sure exactly what.  But, look, Steve was next door at the time and he heard them.  When he went to check it out they bopped him on the head.”

            “Is he all right?”

            “Just got his bell rung,” Becky said.  “Anyway, the cops aren’t going to do anything about it.  I thought maybe you could look into it when you get a chance.”

            “I guess I could,” Emma said in a voice that indicated her reluctance.

            “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.  I know you’ve got lots of other things going on.  Things more important than some little break in.”

            “It’s not like that,” Emma said.  “I want to help.  I really do.”

            “But you’re not going to.”

            “I didn’t say that.”

            “Come on, kid, I can read you like a book.  You know you can’t lie to me.”  Becky was stunned when Emma threw the helmet against the closet door.  “I’m sorry, kid.  I didn’t mean—”

            “It’s not you.”  Emma took a deep breath before blurting out, “I think I know who killed my parents.”

            “Your parents?  Really?”

            Emma nodded.  “An informant in prison overheard someone talking.  He went to Detective Donovan and she went to me.  She gave me their names.”

            “What are you going to do?”

            “Find them.”

            “And then what?”

            “I don’t know.  What can I do?”  She clenched and then unclenched her fists.  “Ever since I found out, I’ve been thinking about what I’d do when I find them.  All the different ways I could torture them, kill them.”  She looked down at the yellow gloves.  “But I can’t, can I?  I’m the Scarlet Knight and I’m not allowed to kill them, even if they did kill Mom and Dad.”

            Becky said nothing for a few moments.  There seemed nothing she could say to what Emma had told her.  Finally she cleared her throat and said, “You always said it didn’t matter.”

            “That’s because I didn’t know.  But now I do.  I’ve seen their faces.  I’ve met their families.  They’re real now.”

            “Does that really make a difference?”

            “Yes.”

            Becky considered this, knowing she was far out of her depth on this.  No one had ever murdered her parents, no matter how many times she’d wished someone would kill her mother.  Despite being Emma’s best friend, the one who knew her better than anyone, this was a subject where they were worlds apart.  “Look, when it comes down to it, I know you’ll do the right thing.  You’ve always done the right thing your whole life.  That’s why you have that armor.”

            “I guess so.”  A smile came slowly to her face.  “Thanks.”

            “That’s why I’m here, kid.”

            Emma nodded.  “I’ll look into that robbery.  I promise.”

            “Don’t worry about it.  You’ve got enough to worry about.”

            “Not so much I can’t help my best friend.”  They hugged and then Becky left her friend to get some rest.  She needed it.

#

            Emma didn’t stay long in the apartment.  She made the mistake of checking her email on the laptop.  There was a terse message from Detective Donovan dated a half hour earlier to come to the band pavilion ASAP.  Someone like Detective Donovan didn’t say something like that unless she meant it.

            Less than an hour after coming home, she was back in the scarlet armor and on her motorcycle.  Given the urgency of the detective’s message, Emma allowed herself to open the throttle all the way again and weave through traffic, back into the park.  She skidded to a stop on the same hilltop and then bounded down to the pavilion, where Detective Donovan waited.

            “You rang?” Emma said.

            “I got word about something big going down.  A major drug deal.  Vendetta’s manicured nails are all over it.”

            “You want my help?”

            “No, that’s exactly what I don’t want.  I want you to keep out of it entirely.  Take a night off to polish your breastplate or something.”

            “Why are you telling me this?”

            “Because I don’t want you hearing it and then showing up.  This one has to go down by the book.  I don’t want a judge throwing out our case because some masked weirdo didn’t follow evidentiary procedure.”  Detective Donovan threw her cigarette to the ground.  “It’s nothing against you personally.  It’s just this has been a long time coming and I don’t want anything to go wrong.  This might be our only chance to nab her.”

            “I understand,” Emma said, though she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of hurt at being asked to stay out of the game for the most important play.  She had worked as hard and tirelessly as Detective Donovan to bring down Don Vendetta; didn’t she deserve to be there when it finally happened?  “I won’t bother you.”

            “Thank you.”  The detective reached into her pocket for another cigarette.  “One more thing.  You find anything on that Earl case yet?”

            “French’s ex said he came by wanting money.  He said someone was after him.  The don’s people said he and Estima skimmed off a deal.”

            “Figures she’d be involved in this somehow.  What are you going to do about it?”

            “I’ll think of something.  It might not be by the book, though.”  She didn’t wait for Detective Donovan’s reply, bounding off into the night.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

            The door to the Sanctuary was open.  Emma pulled the Sword of Justice from its sheath, ready to strike down the intruder.  She wondered who had found it and how.  Had Becky told someone?  Had Marlin somehow contacted someone to tell them?  Or maybe it was the witches:  Mrs. Chiostro and her sister Sylvia.

            With the sword in front of her, she ducked through the door to find the one person she hadn't suspected.  "About time you got here," Percival Graves said.  "I see you've made quite a few improvements since my day.  I rather like the chair."

            "Thanks."  Emma sheathed the Sword of Justice and sat on a crate, the only other place to sit in the Sanctuary; it wasn't designed to be a social club.  "To what do I owe the pleasure?" she asked.  In the last eighteen months Percival had never visited her in the Sanctuary before.  He rarely left the nursing home except on special occasions.

            "Your friend was worried about you."

            "Becky?"

            "Yes.  She called me.  Woke me up in fact.  She sounded on the verge of tears.  Care to tell me what's going on?"

            "Nothing I can't handle," Emma said.  She took off the helmet so that Percival could see her eyes. 

            "Come now, lass, we've always been friends.  You can talk to me."

            Emma looked down at the ground, feeling suddenly ashamed.  She hadn't meant to worry Becky or force Percival to come down into the sewer in the middle of the night.  "I think I found out who killed my parents."

            "And you want to bring them to justice?"

            "Yes."

            "Dead or alive?"

            Emma ran a hand over her face.  There was no sense in lying to him.  "I'd prefer dead."

            He reacted only with a slight nod.  "That's what I thought.  You remember what I told you at your aunt's funeral?"

            "That I had to let go of the past."

            "Exactly.  That's what you have to do here."

            "You mean let them go free?"

            "No, of course not.  But you can't go acting like they're something special.  Treat them like any other thugs in this town.  What would you do then?"

            "Turn them over to the police."

            "Exactly."

            Emma's fists clenched involuntarily.  "But the police are corrupt.  You know that.  The judges are even more so.  What if they walk?  What if they only get a year and are out in six months for good behavior?"

            "Do you really think that will happen?"

            "It's happened before."  More times than Emma wanted to count the criminal she had risked her life to put in jail landed back on the streets months or even weeks later.  Usually they went right back to their old ways, so that by now she had already busted some of them three times.  That couldn't happen in this case.  She wouldn't let it.

            "So you should be the judge, jury, and executioner now?"

            "I didn't say that."

            "But you were thinking it."  He heaved a tired sigh.  "I can't say I know exactly how you feel.  My parents died in the Blitz, killed by some faceless Nazi bastard.  That was part of the reason I joined up with the army.  But I do know what it's like to want to kill someone.  I don't suppose you're in the mood for a story?"

            "I'm always up for one of your stories," Emma said, forcing a tired smile to her face. 

            "Well, here goes then.  When I was in the army, my best friend was a private named Sydney Bernard.  We were the best of mates, sharing a foxhole among other things.  We saved each other what must have been a dozen times at least.

            "After the war, I came here while Syd tried to make a go of things back in England.  He wanted to be part of the solution, to rebuild the place.  Found himself a wife, had a couple of little girls.  Happy as a clam."

            "What happened to him?"

            "He made the mistake of coming to see me one year when he was on a business trip here in the States.  Back in 1956, long before your time.  I had been doing the duty for almost ten years.  Thought I was the toughest bloke around.

            "We met at the airport and then went to the pub for a few pints.  Just like the old days.  Of course we were a little older and he was a little heavier, but it was like we had seen each other just a couple days before.  That's how it is with best friends, don't you think?"

            Emma thought of her and Becky, who had been best friends for nearly seventeen years now.  "Yes, I think so."

            "We were having a grand old time, really whooping it up.  Then I get word there's some big fire going on downtown.  Women and children trapped, lives in danger, all that.  So I tell Syd I've got to go to the bathroom and I call up the armor, suit up, and head over to the fire.  Went up to the top floor, rescued a half-dozen women and kids trapped there.

            "I dropped them off and headed back to the pub.  I knew something was wrong when I saw the police sirens."

            "Syd was dead?"

            "Exactly.  Shot dead in the alley.  He'd gone to the bathroom to find me and seen I wasn't there, so he went out into the alley.  This bloody wanker named Hank Fortuna followed him out there and blew his brains out.  Took his wallet and ran.  He died for fifty dollars American and twenty-five pounds."

            Percival stopped at this point, his voice choking up.  Emma said nothing, waiting for him to gather the strength to go on.  When he finally did, his voice was hoarse.  "I went back to England with the body for the funeral.  Did what I could to comfort the grieving widow and the children, but you know how that is.  Nothing you can say will make anything better.

            "When I got back to the city, I made it my life's work to find this Hank Fortuna and spray his brains all over an alley.  Night and day I worked on it, tracking every worthless hole he might be hiding.  Found one of his mates and broke his arm in three places to find out where Fortuna might be hiding.  He pointed me to a girl's house.

            "I went straight over there.  Kicked the damned door in.  I wasn't going for subtlety this time; I was going for blood.  He was in bed with his girl.  When she saw me, she threw herself across him, trying to protect him.  I picked her up like a rag doll and threw her against the wall.  Knocked her out cold.  He pulled a gun from the nightstand to shoot me.  I let him.  I wanted him to do it so I'd feel more justified in cutting off his head so I could mail it to Syd's widow."

            "But you didn't.  Why?"

            "I just about did it.  Held the Sword of Justice up to him.  It glowed brighter than anything I'd seen, excluding the Dragoon.  I brought the sword up to finish him off.  But I couldn't do it.  I saw the fear in his eyes.  He wasn't a monster, just a small man who'd done a terrible thing.  I almost felt sorry for him then."

            "You let him go?"

            "Don't be daft, girl.  I tied him up and tossed him on the doorstep of the nearest police station along with a newspaper clipping of Syd's murder.  He confessed to the whole thing."

            "What happened to him?"

            "He did ten years of his life sentence.  Died in the joint of a heart attack while cleaning the toilets.  I thought it was poetic justice, that."

            Emma thought about this for a moment.  "So you're saying I should treat these people like anyone else because they aren't monsters, just people?"

            "Precisely, my girl.  That's what you must do.  What the Scarlet Knight does."

            "What if I don't want to be the Scarlet Knight anymore?"

            Percival snorted at this.  "I don't believe that for an instant.  You're the best of the lot.  Better than me, even and I set the bar pretty high.  Ask that little weasel Marlin if you don't believe me about that."

            "What good is any of it if I can't bring justice for the ones I care about the most?"

            "You think killing them is going to do any good?  Is it going to bring your parents back to life?"  He didn't wait for Emma to answer, saying, "Revenge is a short-term solution.  You want to really get justice for your parents, you make them proud by doing the right thing."

            "Letting their killers go free?"

            "By doing what's right."  He reached across the gulf between them to take her hand.  "I don't have to tell you what's right—you already know.  That heart of yours is pure gold.  Who else would befriend an old coot like me?"

            Despite herself, Emma laughed at this.  "I suppose you're right.  Thank you."  She pulled him into a hug, feeling his warmth even through her armor.

            "That's a good girl.  Now, I don't suppose you can give an old man a lift back to the home?  The nurses will be stealing my things by now."

            "Only if you don't mind riding a motorcycle."

            "You Yanks and your motorcycles."  He clucked his tongue at her.  "Well, when in Rome."  He got to his feet, walking with an exaggerated limp to the door.  With a groan he ducked under to emerge into the bomb shelter.  He waited there until Emma had taken off her armor.  It wouldn't do for people to see him hitching a ride with the Scarlet Knight.

#

            Percival's words stuck with Emma throughout the night.  She spliced this with what Becky had told her about knowing to do the right thing when it came time.  They trusted her so implicitly—Emma the saint who never did anything wrong.  The worst part was knowing they were right.  No matter how much she tried imagining the scene, when it came time to lay the fatal blow, she knew she couldn't do it.  She wasn't a killer.

            The alarm rang at six o'clock the next morning.  Emma dressed in her running clothes, hoping some strenuous exercise would help erase the turmoil in her mind.  She jogged down the front steps, but instead of turning towards Robinson Park, she went the opposite way to the Trenches.

            The decrepit neighborhood was even worse in the morning, before the drunks and junkies woke up to face the day.  She passed many of these by, men—and possibly some women, though it was often hard to tell them apart—sprawled on the sidewalk or in an alley or on a doorstep.  These were people the Scarlet Knight couldn't help, people who were sick, not unlike Aunt Gladys.  Her armor and sword could only help make the streets safer for people to live their lives; it couldn't tell those people how to live them.

            The way to Margarita Estima's tenement was etched in Emma's memory; her legs took her there before her mind understood where she was going.  Those same legs carried her up the five flights of stairs and to the woman's door.  She banged on the door, wondering if the little girl would answer again.

            She didn't expect to find a shotgun pressed through a crack in the door.  "You again?  I told you, I don't know where he is," Margarita Estima said.

            "I'm sorry I lied to you yesterday, Ms. Estima," Emma said.  "The truth is I'm not offering him a job."

            "Then you are a cop.  I should have known."  The gun cocked.  "Get out of here before I blow your fucking head off."

            "Wait, I'm not a cop either.  I'm just a concerned citizen."

            Margarita snorted at this.  "I don't need your concern.  Neither does Gomez."

            "He's in trouble, Margarita.  He's in deep with some really bad people and they want to kill him."

            "And what do you want?"

            Emma thought about this for a moment.  "I want to see justice done.  A fair trial"

            "There ain't no fair trials for people like us."

            "Please, Margarita, if you don't help me he's going to die.  These people are going to find him and they aren't going to think twice about blowing his head off and throwing him in the harbor."  She let this sink in for a moment.  "If you help me, he'll live.  I promise."

            The shotgun finally eased out of the doorway.  Through the crack, Margarita's face appeared.  She lowered her voice so no one else would hear her, as if afraid someone was listening in to their conversation.  "The Blue Pine.  It's a bar over on the east side.  You can find him there.  That's all I know."

            "Thank you—" the door slammed in her face. 

            Emma ran downstairs, out of the tenement.  At the first alley she came to, she summoned the Scarlet Knight's armor.  Then, with the cape wrapped around her body, she headed to the Blue Pine to find Gomez Estima, one of her parent's murderers.

#

            Most nights Marlin preferred to stay close to the Plaine Museum.  He said it was to protect the Sanctuary and the secrets it contained.  In reality, Marlin had come to think of the museum as his home over the last fifty years, ever since Percival Graves had first taken the red crate down to the old bomb shelter.

            Marlin was free to move around the city, though the farther he got from the armor, the more faded he felt, as if he were disappearing.  If he strayed too far, he might disappear entirely.  That was something he had never told Graves or Emma, not wanting to show weakness to Graves and not wanting to worry Emma.

            There was a lot he kept from Emma, pegging her straight off as too gentle a soul to trouble with all the ills and evils of the world.  There were reams of stories about previous Scarlet Knights he had not told her, not wanting to trouble her bright but innocent mind.  In particular were stories of members of the Order who went insane from the pressure of the duty, one going so far as to disembowel himself with the Sword of Justice.  This proved once and for all whether the sword could slice through the magic armor.

            Having eavesdropped on Emma's conversation with Graves, he thought perhaps it had been unwise not to tell her these stories.  Perhaps it would help her in this crisis to realize that most every Scarlet Knight struggled with this issue at one time or another—at least those who lived long enough to face such issues.

            It always came down to where the line was between justice and petty revenge.  For Marlin this line was far blurrier than for someone like Emma.  In his day, if someone took a sack of grain from your hut, you were free to club him over the head and take not only the grain, but his cows and wife—the cows being the more valuable of the two—as well.  An eye for an eye and all that.  The master hadn't believed in such things.  He believed in noble concepts like fair play.  Fat lot of good fair play ever did the world.  Evil like the Black Dragoon never played fair and that was why it returned again and again.

            If it had been up to Marlin, Graves could have chopped that Fortuna bastard into confetti and Emma could make mincemeat pies from the men who killed her parents.  But the rules of the Order didn't go by what he wanted; the master had set them.  He doubted the master had ever realized normal humans weren't like him and would find such rules difficult to adhere to, even someone as inherently good as Emma Earl.

            As the keeper of the Order of the Scarlet Knight's lore, Marlin knew that 'no killing' was not the actual rule.  There was a set of rules of engagement to be followed.  Basically it boiled down to killing in self-defense or if necessary to save the lives of other people.  Since he doubted killing the men who murdered Emma's parents would save anyone else, the best avenue to pursue was self-defense.  Goad them into a fight and then kill them.  The problem was that since both were unsophisticated thugs, they were unlikely to have the type of weapons that could harm the Scarlet Knight.

            He continued this legal debate with himself as he floated up through the sub-basement and then onto the first floor.  He preferred the first floor with the carcass of the old mastodon and dinosaurs; they were about the only things in the museum older than him.  A man in his village had once claimed to see a mastodon, but he'd been drunk and it was widely assumed he'd seen an old boar drowning in a bog.

            When he heard the motion detectors go off, he cursed to himself, thinking he had been careless again.  Then he realized it wasn't he who had set them off.  A woman stood just inside the doorway of the museum.  He could tell she was a woman by the slight breasts pressing against her black sweater.  She wore a black ski mask and black pants like a cat burglar in a movie. 

            For a moment the woman remained frozen in place.  The security guards came running from where they dozed in their office, their Tasers and flashlights ready.  The nonlethal weapons had been another of Emma's recommendations.  Not because she didn't want to hurt intruders so much as she didn't want the guards hurting themselves, which was far likelier.

            "What are you doing here?" one of the guards shouted.

            The woman waited until they closed in and then she bolted through the front doors.  The guards gave pursuit, which is just what the second member of her team wanted.  Marlin saw him ease up the stairs to the second level, a man with a gray mustache and dressed similarly to his companion.  Following upstairs, Marlin watched as the man headed straight for a display of crystals—a display Emma's department had arranged. 

            With the practiced ease of a real master, the man sliced open the case of gems.  He reached into the glass, pulling out a yellow stone.  Marlin had no idea what it was, but he was certain it was valuable.  Probably valuable enough the man wouldn't be able to sell the thing on the open market without authorities being able to close in on him.

            Nevertheless, he sped away from the museum, instinctually homing in on Emma.  The last place he expected to find her was in a corner of a bar.  With the cape wrapped around her, none of the other patrons could see her; it was good children didn't frequent bars either.  "I hate to interrupt your fun, but someone is robbing the museum," Marlin said.

            Emma jerked her head towards the bathroom.  She slipped into the women's bathroom, which from seeing the clientele of the bar would be a safer place to talk than the Sanctuary.  Dropping the cape, she made herself visible.  "What are you talking about?" she said.

            "An old gent just slipped into the museum and took a yellow stone."

            "The diamond of Kor'Rum?" she said.

            "I have no idea."

            "That's worth two million dollars!"

            "Then you should get back there and find him."

            "I can't."

            "You can't?  Why not?  Waiting for a game of darts?"

            Emma looked down at the floor, which from the ground in dirt probably hadn't been cleaned since before Emma was born.  "I'm on another case right now.  It's important."

            "More important than a two-million-dollar diamond?"

            "Yes."

            Marlin nodded.  "This is about your parents, isn't it?"

            Her head snapped up.  "What do you know about that?"

            "Just a guess.  Is one of them here?"

            "Not yet.  But he should be.  He comes here every night."

            The responsible thing he knew was for her to chase the diamond thieves and forget about some lowlife who'd killed two people nearly fifteen years earlier.  That's what the master would say and what Graves would say.  They were the kind of bleeding hearts who would think that.  Not him.  "Fine.  I'll see if I can tail the thieves and find them.  I'll check back with you later."

            "Thank you."

            "Give them hell."  With that, he disappeared from the bar.

#

            By the time he reached the museum, the old cat burglar had already gone.  Marlin swooped around the area, finally picking up the trail in an alley three blocks away.  The old man was exchanging his black clothes for an ordinary white button-down shirt and khaki pants, as if he were heading out for the early bird special.  The woman had stripped off her sweater to reveal a gray blouse and the mask to reveal a young face he recognized.

            "You," he said.

            Marie Marsh looked up at him.  She was one of a select few people who could see him.  Those strange eyes of hers bored into him.  He edged back, feeling nauseous even though he hadn't had a stomach for nearly four thousand years.  "What are you doing here?" she asked.

            "Who are you talking to, my dear?" the old man asked.

            "The ghost.  He's Emma Earl's friend."

            "I wouldn't say 'friend' exactly.  More like coworker."

            "A ghost?  That's silly talk, dear girl."

            "I've seen him before.  He's not very nice."

            "I'm not very nice?  You just stole a two-million-dollar diamond!"

            "We'll give it back later.  After we've saved her."

            "Marie, we have to get moving.  Tell your ghost friend goodbye," the old man said.

            "You really think you can get away with this?" Marlin asked her.

            The strange girl shrugged.  "I don't care what happens to me.  As long as she's safe."

            "Who?"

            "Veronica."

            The old man grabbed Marie's arm.  "Let's go," he hissed.  He pulled her into the van.  Marlin followed it as it drove away, hovering above it. 

            Veronica.  He remembered her.  She was a little girl in the past who had lived in the halfway house when it was still a private residence.  Back in the 19^th Century.  He didn't know how Marie could communicate with the girl; it was part of her oddness.  What was she talking about when she said they wanted to save her?  She was already dead!  She had been dead for well over a century.

            The van turned right, heading into a section of buildings that had been mostly abandoned decades ago thanks to suburban sprawl.  He followed it until it came to a stop at an old store, the sign still reading, "Schulman's Jewelers."  The doors of the van opened and the old man climbed out, arguing with Marie.  Marlin didn't need to read lips to know the argument was about him.  The old man didn't believe in ghosts while Marie knew what she saw.

            He let them fight it out, heading back to Emma.  He stopped himself halfway there.  He couldn't disturb her now, not when she was so close to finding her parent's killers.  Spinning around a hundred eighty degrees, he headed to Emma's apartment.

            Becky was on the couch, watching television with a young man who looked like Emma if she'd gotten a buzz cut, put on a pair of glasses, and of course hidden her breasts.  This thought gave Marlin pause for a moment, until he remembered his purpose.  He eased down onto the couch, so that his mouth was only an inch from where Becky's head rested on the young man's chest.  "Marie has gotten herself into big trouble," he said.

            Becky didn't move her head, but the way her eyes widened meant she understood.  That she could see him was a side effect of taking one of Mrs. Chiostro's potions, or that's how the witches explained it.  Marlin thought it was more likely because of the close bond between Becky and Emma.  In any case, it didn't matter at this point.

            "I have to go freshen up," she whispered, kissing her young man on the cheek.  Marlin flinched at this, glad he didn't have the nerve endings to shiver anymore.

            Like Emma, she waited until she got to the bathroom to snap, "What are you talking about?  What did Marie do?"

            "She and some old man I've never met stole a jewel from the museum."

            "Did you tell Emma?"

            "She's busy.  I know where they are.  Call the police and tell them to go to Schulman's Jewelers.  The diamond is there."

            Becky considered this for a moment.  "No, I'm not going to the cops."

            "What?  The little idiot has committed a felony.  Lock her up!"

            "Marie has issues, but she's not a bad kid.  This old man is probably making her do it."

            "No, she wants to help him.  To save her friend."

            "What friend?"  Marlin explained about the little Victorian-era girl.  Becky took this in with a skeptical look.  Finally she shook her head.  "You're sure that's what she said."

            "Positive.  I've met the girl.  Cute little bugger, like one of those porcelain dolls.  Thinks the world of Marie, too.  More so than her own mother."

            "This is getting crazier by the minute," Becky said.  She blew out a loud sigh.  "Steve and I will go over there.  Maybe we can talk her into handing over the jewel.  If we return it right away maybe no one will notice."

            "I'm sure the security guards will notice.  You can't just put a note on it and say you're sorry.  Let the bloody dolt go to prison where she belongs."

            "Not until we've talked to her.  She's just a confused kid, all right?  She's had it rough growing up."

            Now Marlin understood Becky's reluctance to turn Marie in.  She saw a bit of herself in Marie.  It would have to be a small bit considering the size difference between them.  Before he could say this aloud, Becky was already rushing out the bathroom door to get her boyfriend.  "We have to go," she said.

            "What?  Why?"

            "I know who stole that stuff from your lab.  Come on."  Marlin followed them out to Steve's car.  He had a bad feeling they were heading into serious trouble.

 

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

            It took another half-hour for Gomez Estima to show up.  Though he was a little older and a little heavier, Emma recognized him from the rap sheet photo.  She lurked in the corner of the bar, hidden by her golden cape.  At the sight of him, she felt a surge of heat spike through her body until sweat broke out along her forehead.  She wanted to grab him, haul him outside, and beat him until he explained why he had taken her parents from her.

            She held back on this.  If she did that, she might never find the other killer—Roy French.  Emma's instincts told her the pair would be staying together for mutual protection from Don Vendetta.  If she followed Estima, he would lead her to French.  Then she would spring the trap and have them both at once.  And if he didn't take her to French, then she would have to settle for him and locate the other on her own.

            Her face continued to burn with anger as she watched Estima drink three beers.  He talked with some of the other patrons about the Knights, the city's baseball team, as if it were an ordinary day.  As if he weren't being stalked by the mob.  As if he hadn't taken away her family.  Beneath the cape, her fists clenched.  She steadied herself, thinking of what Percival had said.  When the time came, she would do what was right.  That time was coming.

            After finishing his third beer, Estima tossed a bill onto the counter.  "See you tomorrow, Gar," he said.

            "Stay out of trouble," the bartender said.

            "Always," Estima said with a grin that made Emma want to punch a wall.  She waited until he opened the door to follow him outside.  Once out in the chilly air, he shoved his hands in his pockets, turned up his collar, and began to walk.  She followed him.

            Her instincts were proven right when he stopped in front of an old fish-packing factory.  The smell of the place was enough to send Emma for a loop, but she supposed Estima was used to it by now.  That he was huddling in such a terrible place gave her a glimmer of satisfaction.

            He climbed up a rusty ladder to the second floor of the plant.  She waited until he got all the way up before bouncing up to the second floor after him.  He scurried like a rodent through a maze among the rusty machines, at last reaching a corner reserved for the foreman's office.  "Where hell you been?" a man's voice called out.

            "Just getting a drink."

            "You bring me anything?"

            "Get your own fucking drinks.  I'm not your wife."

            "My wife was a lot better looking."

            "Fuck off."

            Emma slipped into the office, where she saw Roy French.  He had obtained a scar along the left side of his face since the mug shot in his rap sheet had been taken, but it was obviously him.  She tried to imagine what a seemingly good woman like Mrs. Perry had ever seen in him.  "I couldn't resist his puppy dog eyes," she had said.  In those brown eyes Emma saw nothing but a hardened criminal and a cold-blooded killer.

            Now was the time for justice.

            There came a squeal of brakes from below, followed by a babble of voices.  French and Estima heard these noises as well.  "They're here!" French shouted.

            "What?  How did they find us?"

            "How the hell should I know?"

            Emma rushed back along the maze of machines, her worst fears realized when she saw the muscle-bound thugs coming up the ladder.  Then she watched as a limousine pulled through the open garage door of the plant.  The chauffeur, another of the don's goons with a black cap squeezed onto his square head, hurried to open the back door.  Don Vendetta herself stepped from the back of the car, dressed in a fur coat that cost more than all the clothes in Emma's closet.  "Bring those fuckers to me," she shouted to her men.  "Time for them to learn no one steals from me."

            Emma looked back towards the office, where the killers of her parents waited.  Percival's words echoed through her head.  It was time to do the right thing.  She ran back to the ladder leading up to the second floor.  The first goons were at the top.  Emma let her cape drop and went to work, laying out one with a chop to the throat and another with a roundhouse kick to the stomach.  More came up the ladder.

            "Come on!" she shouted.  They did.

#

            Half the police force waited by the old warehouse.  This included the entire SWAT team and every cop in the vice unit.  At the head of the group was Detective Donovan.  This was her moment, when she would finally put Don Vendetta away. 

She had looked forward to it even before she made detective, back when she had been a mere beat cop.  Her time on the streets had given her a first-hand education about the carnage created by the Vendetta crime family.  In those days it had been the current don's husband running the show.  In a way things were better back then.  The male don was a brutal, bloodthirsty monster, but not nearly so cunning as his wife.  He had a straightforwardness that the then-Officer Donovan hadn't appreciated until he died.

            The city had gone seriously downhill since the old don died.  Not that things had been good then, but the mob had been more contained, its ambitions far less.  The old don had wanted only to keep the money flowing in and then pass the family business on to his son.  His wife, on the other hand, wanted no less than to rule the city—if not the world.  She was a classic megalomaniac, though subtler than a James Bond villain.  Instead of giant lasers or earthquake machines or other Doomsday weapons, she methodically wove her way into every facet of the city's life.  She attached herself like a leech, sucking the city dry.  Detective Donovan lit a cigarette.  That was the only way to dispose of a leech—burn it off.  Tonight she was going to do just that.

            When the first truck went into the warehouse, Detective Donovan slipped on her bulletproof vest.  No one could stop her from being the first one into the building.  If J. Edgar Hoover had risen from the dead to lead the charge she would have told him to fuck off.  This was her operation, built after years of hard work.  Years of building up the sources necessary to track the don's movements.  This had been achieved through persuasion, bribes, and threats of physical violence, until she had her informers in place within the don's organization.

            The last truck went through the warehouse's garage door.  Once the door closed, Detective Donovan took her pistol from its holster.  "Let's go," she said, loud enough for the rest of the cops present to hear her.

            She took off in a mad dash, not giving a shit about looking for cover or waiting for backup.  At this point if anyone shot at her, she was certain the bullets would ping off her like the Scarlet Knight.  She was invincible. 

            It took only one kick for her to open the door next to the garage door.  Bursting through the entryway, she swept her gun around.  And screamed.

            Don Vendetta was not in the warehouse.  Nor were any of her hired help.  There was only a half-dozen very confused-looking truckers.  One of them said, "Hey, who are you?  What's going on here?"

            "Detective Donovan, Rampart City PD.  What are you carrying?"

            "You want to look at it, go ahead," the trucker said.  He led Detective Donovan over to the back of his truck.  He pulled up the tarp to reveal not bales of drugs or crates of weapons or anything illegal but only a load of frozen bacon.

            Detective Donovan screamed again with rage and frustration.  She had been had, made a fool of by Don Vendetta.  After holstering her pistol, she battered the side of the truck with her open palm until one member of the vice squad was foolish enough to approach her.  "What do you want us to do, Detective?" he asked.

            "Let them go.  They weren't in on the joke."  Then she started back towards the door, gaining momentum until she was running.

#

            The white van remained parked in front of Schulman's Jewelry.  Marlin had at least been right about that much.  No matter how many times Emma vouched for the ghost, Becky always found him hard to trust.  Could there be anyone shiftier than a ghost?  That and she thought his cantankerous worldview a bad influence on Emma, such a good and trusting soul.  She would have been more than happy if he'd been wrong so that she could rub it in his spectral face.

            "What do we do now?" Steve asked.  "Ring the bell?"

            "Pretty much.  Let me go first.  She knows me."

            "I can't—"

            "She's not going to hurt us," Becky said.  This was an assumption on her part, but one she trusted.  Becky had met Marie Marsh only a few times, but she had heard the girl's story from Emma and felt an instant companionship.  Like her, Marie had been abused, thought to be a freak by her own mother.  Except that Marie's mother had died and the little girl bounced from one foster home to another until she wound up in a mental institution.

            When she reached eighteen, she had been turned over to the halfway house and given a job at Aunt Gladys's nursing home so she could reintegrate into society.  As if Marie had ever been integrated into society in the first place.  If Marlin was right, she had somehow met Veronica, a girl from over a century ago, in the halfway house.  Though she wasn't sure whether or not to believe this story, Becky had seen what Marie could do.  She had the ability to not only look at you, but through you to see your darkest secrets.

            Marie had seen Becky's secrets, including a few of them she had never told Emma.  Perhaps for that reason they had never become actual friends.  Still, Becky felt a kinship to Marie, a shared pain.  For that reason she wanted to protect Marie, to save her from whatever mess she'd gotten herself into with this old man Marlin had mentioned.

            The front door to the jewelry store was unlocked.  Becky pushed open the door to see no one inside.  The glass display cases had all been smashed long ago, glass still scattered about the floor.  Becky stepped over the shards of glass to the back room.  In the back of the room, at the top of a stairway leading down, she found Marie.

            "Marie," she whispered just loud enough for the girl to hear.  Marie's head spun around.  Only one of her eyes was visible through her veil of hair, but Becky could feel it drilling into her, prying out her secrets.  "Marie, it's me.  Becky."

            "I know.  You're Emma's friend too."

            "That's right.  And I'm you're friend too, Marie.  I want to help you."

            "You can't help me.  Only he can."

            "Who?"

            "The Watchmaker."

            "Who's that?"

            She heard a click of metal.  An older man with a gray mustache appeared on the stairs next to Marie.  He had a pistol aimed at Becky's chest.  "That would be me, dear girl.  Pleased to make your acquaintance.  Now if you and your young friend would move to the center of the room very slowly, I would be much obliged."

            Becky looked back at Steve, who had followed her into the room.  "I guess we better do what he says," Steve said.  She had no choice but to agree, edging into the center of the room.

            "Very good.  Marie, be a dear and tie her hands."

            "What about me?" Steve said.

            "Actually, young man, I could use your assistance.  The work is turning out to be more difficult than I had imagined."

            "What if I don't want to help you?"

            "Then I shoot your lady friend—and then you."

            Becky turned to look at Steve.  "Do what he says," she said.  She managed to give him a peck on the cheek before he headed towards the stairs.  The old man kept the gun on them while Marie bound Becky's hands with a length of nylon rope.

            "I'm sorry," Marie whispered into Becky's ear.  "We aren't going to hurt you.  We just can't let anyone stop us until we're done."

            "Until you've done what?"

            "Until we've saved her."

            "Veronica?"

            "Yes."

            "Marie, this is crazy—"

            "No it's not!" Marie shouted.  "I'm not crazy.  Veronica is my friend.  Friends help each other.  Like you helped Emma when she was in trouble."

            "But—"

            "Enough," the old man snapped.  He motioned towards her with the gun.  "Come over here, slowly.  We'll all go downstairs and you can see the machine for yourselves."

            "The machine?" Steve said.

            "My masterwork.  The greatest achievement in human history."

            "Well, at least you're modest about it," Becky grumbled.  Before she started towards the stairs, she took a look back towards the front door.  She caught just a faint glimpse of Marlin as he floated away.  Good, she thought.  He would tell Emma.  She would rescue them.  Becky wondered though if it were already too late to rescue Marie.

#

            For the greatest achievement in human history, it didn't look like much.  In large part this was because the entire machine hadn't been assembled yet.  The old man motioned for Becky to sit in a rickety wooden chair propped in the corner.  He left her with Marie while he and Steve went into the vault.  She heard them whispering about something, but couldn't make out the voices through the vault's thick walls.

            "Marie, how can you do this?" Becky said.  "I'm your friend." 

            "No you're not."

            Becky had to acknowledge this was mostly true.  "Maybe I'm not your friend, but I'm not your enemy either.  I don't deserve being tied up like this."

            "It's for the best," Marie said.  "Until we can save her."

            "This is wrong, Marie.  You know that."

            "It's wrong to let her die.  Not when I can help her."

            "Marie, please, she's already dead.  She's been dead for a long time."

            "Shut up!  You sound like him."

            "Who?"

            She motioned to the vault.  "The Watchmaker.  He says she's already dead so it doesn't matter how long it takes to save her.  He doesn't understand.  No one does."

            "What don't we understand?"

            "You don't know what it's like to see her and not be able to do anything.  To watch her get sicker and sicker while knowing I could help.  I could save her."

            From the vault came the sound of metal pounding and muffled curses.  Becky looked anxiously towards the vault, wondering what would happen to Steve.  After this Watchmaker finished with his machine, would he shoot Steve?  Would he shoot them both?

            Sensing her thoughts, Marie said, "We're not going to hurt you.  We didn't want to hurt anyone.  I just want to help her."

            "Marie—"

            "Shut up!"

            "Please—" Becky rocked backwards when Marie slapped her across the face.  The blow had a lot more strength behind it than Becky would have thought possible from Marie's skinny arms.  Becky tasted blood in her mouth, but feeling her tongue around it didn't seem like anything too serious.

            "Are you girls playing nice?" the Watchmaker asked.  "Or are we in need of a little harsher discipline?"

            "We're fine," Marie mumbled.

            "Good."  The Watchmaker took her arm.  "We are ready to begin.  Get your friend up and take her into the vault to join her young man."

            "If you hurt Steve—"

            "I've done nothing to him.  He is an excellent worker.  Much better than I could have hoped.  We might have been to this phase long ago if I'd had his assistance earlier."

            "I'm glad you're so happy," Becky snarled.  Marie took her arm, helping her too her feet.  The Watchmaker followed them into the vault, where Steve was bent over what looked more like something taken from a junkyard than working machinery.  At the center of it was the diamond the Watchmaker had stolen from the Plaine Museum.  "Are you all right?"

            "I'm fine," he said, looking up from his work.  "How about you?"

            "I'm OK."

            "Marie, my dear, would you tie his hands?  I don't want him interfering at our moment of triumph."  Marie nodded silently and tied Steve's hands behind his back with another length of rope.  He made no attempt to resist as the Watchmaker kept his pistol trained at Becky's head.

            "Good.  Now both of you stand against the wall," the Watchmaker said.  They did as he commanded, pressing themselves against a cool metal wall of the vault.  Becky wished she could touch Steve's hand, to feel the comforting warmth of his skin.

            Meanwhile, the Watchmaker instructed Marie to sit on a stool next to the pile of equipment.  Once she sat down, he placed a metallic cap on her head like a crown.  The cap trailed a web of wires, which the Watchmaker plugging into various parts of the equipment.  "And now my friends, you will witness a moment of history—quite literally," the Watchmaker said.  He flipped a series of switches, bringing the equipment grinding and wheezing to life.

            Power flowed through the cables, the ends against the cap sparking as they came to life.  To Becky it was all like something from a Frankenstein movie.  At any moment she expected the Watchmaker to scream, "It's alive!"

            Instead, it was Marie who screamed.  Her body twitched and trembled in the chair as if she were being electrocuted.  "Is this supposed to happen?" she asked Steve.

            "I don't know," he said, watching with scientific fascination.

            The Watchmaker put a hand on Marie's shoulder.  "It's all right, my dear.  You're doing fine.  Now concentrate.  See Veronica in your mind.  Open the gateway."

            At first nothing happened, but then Becky saw a smear of green light at the far end of the vault.  She followed the light back to Marie's eyes.  Those strange black eyes were now glowing the same shade of green as the light.  "My God," Becky breathed.

            "It's amazing," Steve said.

            The smear of light at the end of the vault became larger, forming a hazy rectangular doorway.  As Becky watched, the doorway became brighter, until it looked almost solid.  She turned her face away so as not to be blinded.  Even Steve turned away; she followed his eyes to the machinery, where the diamond pulsed with the same green light.

            "What the hell is happening?" Becky asked him.

            "I have no idea."

            "What's happening is Marie is opening a window into the past."  The Watchmaker came over to Becky.  He kept the pistol in one hand while the other untied her bonds.  "You are going to be our guinea pig.  The first time traveler in human history."

            "Time traveler?  Wait—"

            "You will walk through the doorway or I'll shoot your young friend."

            Becky was going to challenge this point, but it became obvious from looking into his steel gray eyes that he would have no qualms about shooting Steve—or her.  "Will you let us go then?" she asked.

            "Of course.  So long as you do what I ask."

            "What's that?"

            "You will bring young Veronica with you.  So that she can be cured."  The Watchmaker motioned to Marie.  "It's my gift to her."

            Becky turned to Steve.  She stood on her toes for a moment to kiss him on the lips.  "I love you," she said.  Before he could say anything back, she ran through the opening.

#

            The limousine's tires squealed as it backed out of the warehouse.  Emma watched Don Vendetta flee the scene so that she couldn't be tied to any of the goons lying scattered around the floor.  Emma might have gone after her, if the last half-dozen of these thugs didn't surround her.

            For a moment she stood panting in the center of them, her body still twitching from the adrenaline that was enhanced by the magic armor.  The hired goons seemed to be silently debating among themselves who would go first.  There were enough of their brethren already down for the count to make them wary.

            "Well, get to it," she hissed.  "I don't have all night."

            One of them finally gathered the courage to try leveling her with a haymaker.  She easily ducked under this, responding with an uppercut that sent him flying back fifty feet.  A thug behind her tried to take advantage of a perceived opening to aim a punch for the back of her head.  She whirled around, putting him off balance with a leg sweep.  She grabbed him by the front of his shirt, using him like a battering ram into the stomach of another attacker.

            The other three took a collective step back.  They had lost their stomach for the fight, especially now that Don Vendetta had successfully made her exit.  She held out her hands, motioning them forward.  None of them took up the invitation.  "Cowards!" she screamed.

            In her eighteen months as the Scarlet Knight, Emma had never felt anything like this.  She had never felt such a joy at pummeling the hapless goons the don employed.  In the past she had often enough felt sorry for them, knowing they were just doing a job.  An illegal job, but a job nonetheless.  They weren't evil, merely tools of evil.

            This time she had felt no such sympathy for them.  She had even gone out of her way to inflict extra pain on her attackers.  Whereas before she might have merely pushed a man back, this time she grabbed his arm, twisting it until she heard it snap.  As his scream echoed across the warehouse, she threw him over her shoulder, slamming him to the floor.  He didn't get up.  Another man had probably been made impotent when Emma aimed a kick to his groin with the power of an angry mule.  She had actually smiled as he lay writhing in pain.

            The last three goons turned to run.  Emma didn't give them the chance.  She bounced into the air, performing a deft flip to land in front of them.  She seized the nearest goon by the hair, pulling out a large chunk of it as she hurled him face-first into a metal pillar.  He would need serious dental work later.  She smiled again at this.

            The second one had found a length of pipe he hoped to use as a weapon.  As he brought the pipe down, she seized his hand.  She wrenched it back, hearing another satisfying snap of bone.  The man's scream was silenced when Emma booted him across the second floor, where he lay unmoving in a heap with some of the others.

            The final goon employed a new strategy:  he fell to his knees before her.  "Please," he said.  "I got a wife.  Kids.  Don't hurt me."

            She pulled the Sword of Justice from its sheath.  She held the blade to the side of his head as if she were going to knight him.  The golden blade began to glow, signaling that she was in the presence of evil.  A grin came to Emma's face.  "Sorry," she said.

            "No!" the man screamed, closing his eyes as he waited for her to bring the sword down.  She didn't.  Instead, she punched him in the face with her free hand and then finished him with a kick to the midsection that sent him flying like a soccer ball into a pile of crates.

            Silence fell over the warehouse.  Emma stood amidst the fallen bodies, trembling not only with adrenaline but leftover rage.  She wanted more.  A dozen, a hundred, a thousand more of them.  She could take on an entire army by herself.  There weren't any more—just the last two, the two who had brought her here.

            She stepped over unconscious bodies as she made her way slowly to the old foreman's office.  French and Estima remained cowering there, unable to escape with the don's goons flooding the building.  She had protected them from Don Vendetta's men, saved their lives from her vengeance.  She had saved them for herself.

            "Oh Jesus," Estima moaned.  He pressed himself to the floor, putting his hands over his head as if that could make him invisible.

            Emma stood in the doorway.  She took the Sword of Justice from its sheath once more.  "Now," she said.  "We're going to find out the truth."

            As she took a step forward, the world exploded in green light.  Emma threw a hand to her visor, but the light penetrated both her glove and visor, becoming so bright that she screamed in pain.  She dropped to her knees, the Sword of Justice slipping from her grasp.

            The green light pulsed for a moment and then there was one final, nova-like flash—